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Apple Looks To Introduce OLED Displays In iPhone Models From 2018 (thestack.com) 225

An anonymous reader writes: Apple is expected to integrate organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display technology in its iPhone handsets from 2018. The Cupertino-based giant will jump from liquid crystal display (LCD), which has been used in iPhones since 2007, to OLED – turning to suppliers like LG Displays, according to Japanese reports. The switch follows the steps of other smartphone makers such as Samsung and LG, which have both already integrated OLED technology in their mobile device ranges.
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Apple Looks To Introduce OLED Displays In iPhone Models From 2018

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  • Oh, really? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26, 2015 @08:43PM (#51010609)

    My I9100 has OLED too. In 2018 it will be 5 years old. Really up to date hardware reseller, this apple inc. is.

    • Re:Oh, really? (Score:4, Informative)

      by cheater512 ( 783349 ) <nick@nickstallman.net> on Thursday November 26, 2015 @09:27PM (#51010749) Homepage

      My Nokia N85 (which still works) has a OLED screen.

      In 2018 it will be 10 years old.

      • The N series phones were too far ahead of their time. I remember my N73 had a physical shutter in the camera. Never seen that trick again.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jblues ( 1703158 )

      Hehe, I thought the same thing. But seriously: As I understand it, current iPhones use IPS (in-plane switching) displays, which, while more expensive offer superior color reproduction. I'd bet that by 2018 OLED will have caught up or exceeded IPS in this regard and therefore it makes sense to switch at this time.

      • OLED has caught up and surpassed IPS in everything: http://www.displaymate.com/Gal... [displaymate.com]

      • Re:Oh, really? (Score:4, Informative)

        by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Friday November 27, 2015 @02:55AM (#51011881) Journal

        "As I understand it, current iPhones use IPS (in-plane switching) displays, which, while more expensive offer superior color reproduction."

        What?
        Pardon?

        I think you got your technology backwards. OLED is the one which is superior in color reproduction, always has been, by a leaping mile.
        There are some good IPS displays out there but OLED is superior technology, has been for years (burn in issues aside, I'm talking colour / blakcs)

        • by AK Marc ( 707885 )

          OLED is the one which is superior in color reproduction, always has been, by a leaping mile.

          Then why, when two phones are side by side in the store, do the customers not even notice which has OLED without Samsung's huge AMOLED+ signs pointing at their phones?

          • I'm not sure where you're getting your evidence here but I think you need to go and do some googling and read up on OLED technology, colour depth, black levels and what have you. This stuff is tried, tested, proven, documented and ... honestly, I thought well known?

            • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
              So, side by side in the store, the only way for a regular human to tell them apart is to read the spec sheets on them and declare "this one should be better, so I'll believe it to be better because the spec sheet says so".

              Thanks for the help. Next time I see them side by side in a store, I'll be sure to note that as the difference.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        IPS displays offer more accurate colour overall, but AMOLED has better blacks and colour seem to "pop" more. Having said that, AMOLED is already 99% as good as IPS now, when properly calibrated. LG AMOLED TVs are pretty accurate, for example.

        There are some other advantages too, like they can go into a low power black and white mode for display notifications while the screen is "off", or rather in an ultra low power state. AMOLED also reproduced motion much better than LCD, with much lower transition times.

    • by shugah ( 881805 )
      But they'll be "retina" OLED displays. :P
  • 2015 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Thursday November 26, 2015 @08:44PM (#51010613)

    The switch follows the steps of other smartphone makers such as Samsung and LG, which have both already integrated OLED technology in their mobile device ranges

    Plus, Apple, in 2015, is still not able to provide Macbooks with matte screens. Working while watching a mirror for hours is an eye killer..

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      Maybe if you put a paper bag over your head?

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And who in their right mind would buy such a defective product?

  • Apple CEO Tim Cook: Announces things before they are ready.
    • by schnell ( 163007 )

      Apple CEO Tim Cook: Announces things before they are ready.

      Slashdot reader Futurepower(R): doesn't actually read articles or even article summaries enough to understand that Tim Cook and/or Apple didn't announce anything here. It was speculation by some douchebag "analyst."

      There are plenty of good reasons to criticize Apple. Making shit up is not one of them. Please don't give fuel to flamewars by just posting anti-Apple shit without actually even reading either the article or the goddamn summary.

  • by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Friday November 27, 2015 @12:26AM (#51011417) Homepage

    I'm actually a fan of OLED displays when they're perfect, yes, even the bright colors.

    But dammit it's hard to find a really good *actual* OLED display in an *actual* unit.

    Went through five phones before I got a Note 4 with a good display. Went through four Galaxy Tab S units to find a good one new out of the box. Let's see, what are the problems encountered in the various and sundry displays?

    - Strong yellow cast, like ridiculously strong
    - Pink/green gradient, usually from corner to corner, with "white" only in display center
    - Uneven brightness, i.e. dark "splotches" on white backgrounds or "dark gradients" at one edge of the screen to about 1-2" in from bezel
    - Terrible pixelation/pixel noise at low brightness, not unlike digital camera "noise" in low-light exposures
    - Burn-in (even in supposedly factory-new devices)

    Either QC or the production process or both appear to be nearly fatally flawed for Samsung, and they're currently the biggest shipper of OLED screens in gadgets, and have had years of experience. You'd think they'd have it sorted out by now.

    I love the *potential* of OLED, but it seems like for the most part right now, attempts to actually ship them in consumer devices leave a lot to be desired.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday November 27, 2015 @03:54AM (#51012049) Homepage Journal

      That's odd, all those sound like problems you get with LCDs, not AMOLED screens.

      The uneven brightness is common with LCDs due to them being backlit, and I have to say that the iPad in particular is terrible for it (well, the older ones, I haven't looked at the new ones). Same for uneven brightness and splotches. AMOLED is generally immune to them, if it fails it tends to be via banding rather than blotching.

      The yellow discolouration is the glue used to stick the screen layers together, affects LCD as well. The noise at low brightness was an issue but has been fixed on newer panels, from the last couple of years. Burn in with AMOLED clears up pretty quickly, I used to get it with the status bar on my old Samsung but after a few seconds in a full screen app it would fade away.

      You have been incredibly unlucky it seems.

      • No, these arw characgeristic of OLEDs.

        LCDs have their own problems:

        - Backlight leakage
        - "Bright" and "dark" edges (relative to backlight edge)
        - Dim corners (usujally just one, due to slight LCD warping)

        etc.

        The iPad Air IZGO display had tons of problems at first, too. I remember seeing them at a store and thinking, "geez, there's not a single good display in this entirew row of iPad Air units."

        But that doesn't absolve OLED of its problems. I think for me the big issues arew the color cast issues. The pink/gr

        • Color cast is entirely an Android problem. If Google would get off its butt and implement color management in Android, you could simply profile the screen and correct the color in software. That is in fact what Apple does with its phones, tablets, and laptops to eliminate color casts - they color calibrate each screen and implement the correction in software. It's got nothing to do with OLED - as long as red, green, and blue are being generated in sufficient quantities, you can have a perfectly color cal
    • by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Friday November 27, 2015 @10:55AM (#51013419) Homepage
      "Either QC or the production process or both appear to be nearly fatally flawed for Samsung"

      I'd lean towards this explanation, and not just in the matter of OLED displays. Over the years, I've noticed a trend of faulty hardware from Samsung. Samsung refrigerator/freezer whose temperature control is prone to go nuts after power outages (usually it stops bothering to cool the contents despite the temerature controls working and showing the current temerature accurately, though on one occasion getting stuck "on" and freezing everything in the fridge. Also, the ice maker ironically freezes up so it can't make ice), camera with a lens/focussing flaw that renders everything outside of a small circle in the center of every photo out-of-focus (sent in in for RMA, got it back unchanged a few weeks later with a note to make sure the battery was fully charged when using, WTF?), Galaxy "Mesmerize" (Galaxy S for US Cellular) whose 3G/wifi/gps/bluetooth radio would regularly completely die until the phone was power-cycled (its replacement actually was okay). My current phone is a Galaxy S4 (running Optimized CyanogenMod 12.1 [romhut.com]) that I'm actually pretty pleased with, but its USB port failed within a few months and I can't transfer data over it (it still charges and I can easily transfer data via sftp, so I haven't gotten around to getting the $5 replacement port and ripping the phone apart to fix it yet).

      Samsung's Quality Control sucks. If I'd had the option of any other rootable phone from another manufacturer when I got the S4 I'd have gone with it instead, but US Cellular's selection is pretty meager. I'm just glad "have to use something other than USB to transfer files" is the only real problem I've had with it.

    • Perhaps that's why Apple isn't going OLED until 2018 - OLEDs have/had issues and Apple believes in 2018 they can get good ones.

      Sure Apple doesn't implement the latest and greatest all the time - they often wait for technology to mature to the point where it meets existing quality. OLED displays are like that - they're bright and vibrant, but their color accuracy is often crap because the gamut is exaggerated on one end. And they're nice and people love the oversaturated look, but again, not accurate.

      Then there's the whole RGB pixel versus PenTile displays which cause all sorts of resolution issues and color issues.

      Also, since LCDs have hit 100% sRGB gamut, the next target is apparently AdobeRGB, where OLEDs are able to get 97%. Perhaps in 2018 Apple can make it 100% AdobeRGB, producing a wide gamut and accurate color.

      OLEDs may have been on other phones for years, but that doesn't mean it's a technology that makes it "acceptable" to Apple - it's just a technology. Apple may be a latecomer, but when they do that, it usually means they've been waiting for the technology to mature and fulfill their requirements.

  • Apple is going to do in 2018 what others have done in 2013, 2014, and 2015.

    What is news is this:

    Apple is no longer a trendsetter, an innovator, a company that others seek to follow.
    Apple is a follower, a duplicator, the ass on the donkey of innovation.

    E

  • Quantum Dots First (Score:4, Interesting)

    by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Friday November 27, 2015 @07:58AM (#51012647)

    My guess is that Apple will move to a quantum dot LCD on the iPhone 7. The main tangible advantage of these is that they are more efficient than existing displays that use RGB filters, which will mean they can make the phone a bit thinner (or more battery life, but then again this is Apple). They also can have better colour performance, which I imagine Apple will heavily tout, despite most people not really caring.

    After that they will move to OLED, since this will allow them to go even thinner.

    For the iPhone 7 I imagine they will:

    • 1. get rid of the headphone jack, allowing them to go thinner.
    • 2. finally get rid of the sim card slot, allowing them to go thinner.
    • 3. go back to a square (iPhone 5) style edge design.
    • 4. move to a multi-element camera, which will allow them to remove the camera bulge from their thinner design.

    iPhone 7S will probably just have wireless charging after all these years.

  • Here is the display section of Anandtech's iPhone 6S and 6S+ review.
    http://anandtech.com/show/9686... [anandtech.com]
    There is something for everyone there, depending on what metric you think is most important. It seems as though the iPhone 6 has one of the best screens in terms of accuracy, but probably the Samsung Galaxy 6 Edge is the best overall screen.
    Here is the Anandtech iPhone 6 review from last year:
    http://anandtech.com/show/8554... [anandtech.com]
    At that time, the iPhone had easily the best display on a phone in display
  • Apple has been trying to play catch up for some time now. When the nice shiny Mac+ came out, that was them (partly) passing the Nexus5 generation. My daughters one seems nearly comparable to my Note4 except that her photos don't seem as sharp as mine.
    Perhaps its just the inferior display?

    It probably doesn't matter how far they are behind the market leaders. Few people by an iPhone because of its superiority.

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