Industry News May/June 2017 Issue 3 Industry News May/June 2017 Issue 3

DisplayMate Rates the Galaxy S8

DisplayMate’s Ray Soneira has released his report on the OLED display in Samsung’s newest flagship smartphone – the Galaxy S8. Here are a few of the highlights from his extensive report, which can be accessed in full at www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_S8_ShootOut_01.htm.

The Galaxy S8 (5.8 inches) and Galaxy S8+ (6.2 inches) have new, state-of-the-art flexible OLED displays, together with a radical new full-display screen design that fills almost the entire front face of the phone, providing a significantly larger display for the same size device (Fig. 1).

Both models have dual-edge, curved-screen, flexible OLED displays. While the display itself is flexible, the screen remains rigid under an outer hard cover-glass that is hot-formed into a rigid curved screen. The curved screen provides two additional user-configurable edge-screen areas that can be viewed from both the front and the sides, even when the phone is placed face down. With the “always on display mode,” the edge screen can even be used as a night-time clock for your bedside table.

Below are some of the outstanding features of the Galaxy S8 (the unit tested by DisplayMate):

•  A new 3K, 2,960 x 1,440 display that fills almost the entire front face of the phone from edge to edge, resulting in a 5.8-in. display with a taller height-to-width aspect ratio of 18.5 : 9 = 2.05. (The S8’s predecessor, the Galaxy S7, had a 2.5K, 2,560 × 1,440 resolution display.) The display area of the Galaxy S8 is also 18% larger than that of the Galaxy S7 for the same size phone.

•  A new and accurate, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut that is also used for 4K TVs. This is the first smartphone to be certified by the UHD Alliance for Mobile HDR Premium to play all of the latest content produced for 4K UHD Premium TVs.

•  The native color gamut of the Galaxy S8 is the result of its new, high-saturation “Deep Red” OLED, resulting in a very impressive 113% of DCI-P3 and 142% of sRGB/Rec.709 gamut. It also produces better on-screen colors in high ambient light.

•  The Galaxy S8 has 5% to 19% higher screen luminance than its predecessor, plus a record peak luminance of over 1,000 nits.

The Galaxy S8 is the first in a new generation of OLED smartphones. OLEDs have now evolved and emerged as the premium mobile smartphone display technology. More than two dozen manufacturers already make OLED smartphones, and the full-screen display design using a flexible OLED will be the new standard for all future top-tier smartphones. In short: The Galaxy S8 is the most innovative and high-performance smartphone display that DisplayMate has ever lab tested, earning a highest-ever grade of A+.

Fig. 1:  Samsung’s new 5.8-in. Galaxy S8 (left) and 6.2-in. Galaxy S8+ (right) feature displays that cover nearly the entire front face of the phone. The Galaxy S8 has a 570-ppi display, and the Galaxy S8+ has a 529-ppi display.  Photos: Samsung


E Ink and Sony Semiconductor Solutions Establish Joint Venture

E Ink and Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation have announced a joint venture for planning, designing, developing, manufacturing, selling, distributing, and licensing products that use electronic paper displays, as well as related applications.

E Ink and Sony have worked together on various e-paper related projects since 2004. The joint venture is officially registered in Taiwan; operations will commence pending regulatory approvals.

Product Briefs

Instrument Systems recently previewed its new CAS 140D spectroradiometer, the fourth generation of the company’s CAS series. The CAS 140D has improved optical and mechanical construction and is smaller and simpler to integrate into existing measurement environments than its predecessors. It also has a changeable interface between the spectrometer and control computer.

LCDTERM’s new programming-free LCD user interface (UI) uses a three-button keyboard for seamless and code-free integration onto any embedded platform, eliminating the need for developers to write software to control the display. The LCDTERM interface includes all control firmware on board, utilizes a speedy ARM M0 processor, and comes with a free application programming interface (API). Included fonts and user-defined bitmaps allow for the addition of 64K-color displays to any embedded system. Display sizes include 1.77, 2.8, and 5 inches.

Osram Opto Semiconductors is expanding its Oslux product family for biometric security solutions with a specially designed variant for facial recognition, the SFH 4796S. This compact infrared LED (IRED) ensures uniform illumination of facial features for high image quality.

Solar-Tectic LLC recently announced that it has succeeded in developing a new sapphire glass technique involving the deposition of a highly transparent crystalline Al2O3 (aluminum oxide) thin film on ordinary soda-lime glass, via a thin buffer layer, using a simple and common deposition technique (e-beam evaporation). The resulting material is lighter and much less expensive than single-crystal sapphire, and is easily scalable for manufacturing and commercialization. Solar-Tectic’s sapphire film is extremely thin, which it claims is important for cost reduction in manufacturing, and is rated an 8 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, which equates to a topaz. (Quartz is rated a 7 and a diamond is rated a 10 on the scale.)


UDC to Invest in PPG Manufacturing Facility

PPG and Universal Display Corporation have announced that Universal Display will invest $15 million in PPG’s Barberton, Ohio, manufacturing facility to double commercial production capacity for Universal Display’s proprietary UniversalPHOLED phosphorescent emitter products. The expansion project, which will add more than 20 positions at the facility, is scheduled to be completed in the third quarter of 2017.

PPG and Universal Display opened an OLED materials production facility at PPG’s Barberton plant in 2013. The site is owned and operated by PPG.

 


LG Shows High-concept OLED Lighting

LG Display recently demonstrated some of its latest flexible OLED light panels at the Euroluce 2017 show in Milan, Italy. Among the most eye-catching of these products were collaborations with leading industrial designer Ross Lovegrove, who used the OLED panel technology to create lighting inspired by marine life (Fig. 2).

Lovegrove also designed the lighting with scalability in mind, saying, “I make a module, which is very economical, but then you multiply that and you can make huge installations.” LG Display is seeking to highlight the flexibility of its OLED light panels for the high-end residential and premium hospitality markets.

Fig. 2:  “Medusa” (left) and “Pyrosome” (right) are OLED lighting artworks by Ross Lovegrove using OLED light panels from LG Display. The artworks were shown at Euroluce 2017 in Milan, Italy. Photos: LG Display