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If there ever was a market that could do with more competition, it's the OLED smartphone display industry. Samsung has long ruled the roost with its organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, with LG and Sony several paces behind. There are other, less visible players in the market, of course, but overall it's a relatively small group, considering the panels are now a hallmark of premium handsets. A new competitor has entered the market as of today, however. Japan's Sharp has announced that it will offer OLED panels in its new smartphones this year starting with the AQUOS Zero, and also plans to sell displays to other manufacturers.
LG has waited a bit longer than expected to announce a successor to the G6, but the G7 ThinQ is probably just around the corner. LG has been dropping breadcrumbs in the lead-up to the announcement, and today it's talking about the screen. As previous rumors suggested, it'll be an LCD. However, LG says its "Super Bright Display" technology will offer improved battery life with a brightness of 1,000 nits.
Rumors about LG's next flagship have been all over the place. LG was considering rebranding the G series, then the company reportedly started over on the phone. A device called the 'G7 Neo' was privately shown at MWC last month, which had a 19.5:9 OLED screen with a notch. Whatever phone ends up being the G7, it won't have an AMOLED display, according to a new report from The Investor.
We've seen flexible displays tech pop up at trade shows for years, but it doesn't really show up in products you can buy. The closest we've gotten are the curved AMOLED displays from Samsung. Now, JDI (that's Japan Display Inc) has announced a new LCD display tech that is flexible and resistant to cracking. You can't buy anything with this display yet, but maybe down the road.
Yesterday, LG's display technology division unveiled its new 18:9 5.7" "QHD+" LCD panel. While trying to say that is a mouthful (definitely a tongue-twister), the best part is that we will get to see it on the upcoming G6, which we hope is announced at MWC next month.
Itty-bitty bezels are all the rage for high-end smartphones. Samsung's Edge series (which ostensibly includes the Note 7) shrinks them with curved screens, manufacturers like Sharp have crazy designs that smoosh everything down into the bottom of the body, and pretty much everyone is trying to make the edges of their devices as small as possible. But no one has reached the holy grail of this idea: a phone that's basically just a screen on the front. JDI, a Japanese technology supplier, is working on it with their latest design.
LG continued the resolution war last spring when it announced the LG G3 with a 2560x1440 LCD. The display had good sharpness, but the brightness and colors were not great. LG says it has a new and improved 5.5-inch LCD ready to go, and it's going to be used in its "forthcoming flagship smartphone," meaning the G4.
Move over, Sharp: LG wants to claim your crown for the "world's thinnest bezel." Modern smartphone designs are bumping up the screen and slimming down everything else, as evidenced by the latest flagships from, well, just about everywhere. LG is hoping to continue that trend with its proprietary "Neo Edge" design. The first production screen in the series is a 5.3-inch 1080p panel with bezels of just .7mm. That's about as thin as the graphite in a typical mechanical pencil.
Motorola chose to go with an LCD panel for the Moto 360, which should mean no problems with burn-in like you'd see on an AMOLED. However, a few users have started reporting something that looks an awful lot like burn-in. What we're probably seeing is image persistence, which can sometimes happen to LCDs. While annoying, it's not as bad as AMOLED burn-in.
If you've been holding off on a new phone purchase to get a look at Samsung's Galaxy Note III first, you won't have long to wait: the company is all set to unveil it at their pre-IFA event on September 4th. The Note III has proven surprisingly leak-resistant, but this morning we got the first bit of possibly significant information comparing an alleged screen panel for the new model to the Note II from 2012. Observe:
LG Shows Off Insane 5.5-Inch, 2560x1440 LCD Panel, Beats World Record For PPI And Thinness
LG Shows Off Insane 5.5-Inch, 2560x1440 LCD Panel, Beats World Record For PPI And Thinness
In South Korea, there's a never-ending war between Samsung and LG for display superiority. The latest salvo fired comes from the latter, which announced an astonishing new smartphone IPS-LCD panel yesterday. The 5.5-inch prototype screen uses a WQHD resolution of 2560x1440 (seen elsewhere on 27-inch monitors). The density is 538 pixels per inch, the highest of any mobile screen to date.
Phones are always getting thinner. For whatever reason, that's a metric that matters to the general public more than battery life. As the phones slim down, so do the screens. LG is stepping up its display game by producing the thinnest 1080p LCD in the world. This 5.2-inch panel is only 2.2mm thick and has a 2.3mm bezel. This is about as svelte as you can make a bezel without getting into those wacky bending screens that pop up at tradeshows, but never in actual devices. Though, the bezel on an actual device would be a bit wider due to the housing and screen mounts.
Looking to "rebalance the relationship" between humans and their smartphones, Moscow-based Yota Devices has announced the YotaPhone, a smartphone with an LCD display on one side, and an e-ink screen on the back.
True to a rumor we saw earlier this month about a possible addition to Samsung's Galaxy Player line, the Korean manufacturer has just unveiled – via Samsung Tomorrow – the ginormous Galaxy Player 5.8.
The wait for Notion Ink's dual-core Tegra 2 based Adam tablet pre-orders is finally coming to an end - after yesterday's teaser blog post that now generated over 8000 comments, Rohan Shravan, the CEO and the public voice of Notion Ink, put up some details of the pre-order that is indeed coming today.
Android is getting some love from the great white North: the HTC Desire is coming to Canada on Telus. The Desire features: