SAMSUNG HAVE BEEN pushing its AMOLED display technology pretty hard, in fact the company has gained so much popularity that it can produce enough of its smaller displays that go into smartphones. At CES Samsung is set to show off several new AMOLED displays, including a flexible 4.5-inch model and a pair of larger qFHD transparent prototypes.
The flexible 4.5-inch model might be the most interesting one, although the 800×480 resolution doesn’t really impress. However at 2mm thick and the ability to be rolled up, maybe we’ll start to see devices with extendable displays in the near future. There are still limits to this display though, as the radius of the roll up display is still one centimetre which would make for a fairly thick device for the screen to go into.
Rather than using a common glass substrate, Samsung has developed a new plastic substrate that is more heat resistant than previous such solutions and this has enabled Samsung to create its new flexible AMOLED display. It’s still far from mass production ready, but Samsung hails it as a major step in the right direction.
As for the other two displays, we’re looking at a 19 and a 14-inch qFHD (that’s quarter full high definition in proper speak) transparent panels for use in TVs, monitors and in the case of the 14-incher, notebooks. Quarter full HD resolution isn’t a very high resolution though, as it’s only 960×540 pixels. This isn’t exactly going to impress anyone with a current display of any type, despite the advantages in colour reproduction that AMOLED offer over traditional LCDs. We’re not quite sure why Samsung has gone for a solution where these displays have a 30 percent transparency at all times, but the press release talks about sticking these AMOLED panels in car windows for rear seat passengers.
We have to apologize for mixing up QFHD and qFHD earlier here and thanks to reader “bee” for pointing that out in the comments below. The difference between a capital Q (for Quad) and a lower case q (for quarter) makes a big difference and all of a sudden these new AMOLED panels aren’t nearly as exciting as we thought they’d be. As for either product ever making it into mass production, that’s an entirely different story, but hopefully we’ll see some kind of retail worthy products come out of Samsung’s labs within the next couple of years.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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