Officials from SID reported that 369 Apple employees attended Displayweek this year - a 30% increase over last year. And indeed I can say that you could see Apple's employees all over the show. It's clear that Apple is increasingly interested in next-generation display technologies - including OLED displays, Micro-LED displays and foldable technologies.

SID further says that this year 40 Google employees, 25 Amazon employees and 23 Oculus employees attended the show. The display is an extremely important part of most mobile devices today, and TIer-1 producers want more and more control on the display type, quality and performance.

In May 2017, Google announced that it has partnered with "one of the leading OLED makers" to develop a high-end VR display. Google is now set to demonstrate this display at SID 2018 in May.

The new Google-designed display is a 4.3" 18Mp (1443 PPI, probably around 5500x3000 resolution) VR display featuring a refresh rate of 120 Hz. This will be the highest-density OLED display ever (not counting OLED-on-silicon microdisplays). Current VR AMOLEDs in production reach only about 600 PPI.

Google's Pixel 2 XL (which started shipping in October 2017) is one of the first two phones to adopt LG Display's new 6" 1440x2880 (538 PPI) pOLEDs (alongside with LG's own V30). While on paper these displays are superb, actual reviews were rather dismal - as both reviewers and customers complained about bad color reproduction, graininess and problematic viewing angles. In addition many users seem to report serious image retention issues.

According to reports in 2017, LGD faced very low yields at its 6-Gen E5 line, and so had to produce these smartphone displays at its Gen-4.5 flexible AMOLED line. Some users are now saying that these issues do not plague all of Google's phone - and some come with noticeable better displays. This should be good news for LGD and it's likely that as the company gains more experience with smartphone pOLED production, it will produce better looking displays in better yields.

Tom's guide posted an interesting review that compares the OLED display of the iPhone X (5.8" 1125x2436) to the OLED displays of the Galaxy Note 8 (6.3" 2960x1440) and the Google Pixel 2 XL (LGD 6" 2960x1440 pOLED). This is Apple's first OLED phone, but Tom's Guide finds it superior to the OLEDs used by the other phones, especially if you want a realistic color reproduction.

The review shows how the iPhone is brighter than the other displays (574 nits, compared to 438 nits no the Pixel 2 XL and 408 nits on the Note 8. This test was performed for full-screen content. The Note 8 can actually achieve 1,240 nits but on specialized conditions and only when a small part of the screen is active.

Google started shipping its Pixel 2 XL smartphone a few weeks ago, and this is one of the first two phones to adopt LG Display's new 6" 1440x2880 (538 PPI) pOLEDs. While on paper these displays are superb, actual reviews were rather dismal - to the point that some reviewers say that these are simply "bad displays".

Both reviewers and customers complain about bad color reproduction, graininess and problematic viewing angles. In addition many users seem to report serious image retention issues. Google has now posted an update regarding the Pixel 2 XL display.

In September 2017 LG Display started shipping its new 6" 1440x2880 (538 PPI) pOLED displays, which are adopted so far by two smartphones - the LG V30 and Google's Pixel 2 XL. On paper these displays are superb, but actual reviews were rather dismal - to the point that some reviewers say that these are simply "bad displays".

The reviews mentioned bad color reproduction, graininess and problematic viewing angles - and many consumers also reported serious burn-in issues. Samsung has recently started a marketing campaign that says that LG OLED TVs also suffer from image retention problems. In this article we'll explain what is burn-in, the difference between burn-in and temporal image-retention and also try to shed some light on LG's latest OLED problems.

Both LG (the V30) and Google (Pixel 2 XL) recently introduced smartphones that use LG's new pOLED smartphone displays, both with the same display - a 6" 1440x2880 (537 PPI).

An early pre-production review of LG's V30 claimed that the display suffer from serious quality issues, and now reviews of commercially-sold units confirm the display problems.

Google announced its 2nd-generation own-brand smartphones, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. The Pixel 2, produced by HTC, sports a 5-inch FHD (441 PPI) AMOLED display (made by SDC), a Snapdragon 835 chipset, 4GB of RAM, 64/128 GB of storage and a 12 MP camera.

The Pixel 2 XL, manufactured by LG, has similar features, but with a larger 6" QHD+ (537 PPI) pOLED display - made by LGD.

LG Display's first large flexible OLED Production line, the E5 line in Gumi was supposed to start producing panels in June 2017, but reports from Taiwan suggested that LG delayed the mass production to August (which caused LGD to lose a 3 million OLED supply deal with Xiaomi).

According to analysts from CLSA, the yields at the E5 line are still very low - at around 10%, and it will take LG quite some time to increase the yields enough to start mass production - yields will be at around 30% at year's end, still very low. The displays for upcoming LGD's V30 smartphone were supposed to come out of this line, but LGD has decided to produce these at the E2 4.5-Gen line which is not an efficient fab for smartphone panels.

Business Korea reports that LG Display is in talks with Google regarding a large investment in LGD's OLED facilities towards the development and production of VR displays. BK says the investment will amount of hundreds of billions of Won (equivalent to hundreds of millions USD).

The report is somewhat confusing, though. On the one had it says that Google is interested in OLED microdisplays, and on the other it says that LG will produce the displays in its existing flexible AMOLED lines, which use a different technology than microdisplays (which are produced on Silicon).