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Organic LEDs to Supercede LCDs?

Posted by michael on from the matchbox-quake dept.

Hootie Hoo writes "Tech Review.com is reporting that a new screen display method may soon make LCD screens a thing of the past. Organic light-emitting diodes are brighter, thinner, lighter, and faster than liquid crystal displays. They also take less power to run, offer higher contrast, look equally bright from all angles and have the potential to be much cheaper to manufacture than their conventional counterparts." We had a story about these LEDs last year.

11 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. IBM's linux watch uses OLED's by JimRay · · Score: 3

    IBM's second generation (but still completely useless) linux watch uses an OLED for all the reasons mentioned here: bright display, low batter consumption, etc. Check out the CNet article.

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    My other computer is your Windows box
  2. Re:so what by Bearpaw · · Score: 5
    Yea, that's great, but when will they be on the market for the average jo to buy one?

    Last September.

    From the article: "The first phone to hit the market with an organic light-emitting diode display is Motorola's $300 Timeport P8767, which went on sale last September."

  3. And in the wilderness... by Aggrazel · · Score: 4

    A horde of lightning bugs all grab their asses in terror.

  4. Re:again ? by trcooper · · Score: 3

    This one isn't vaporware. While it's certainly mis-represented in the /. article, organic LEDs are intended right now to be used mainly in cell phones. You can actually purchase one of these puppies Today. They're looking at low use devices right now because of problems with the life of the display. No one's claiming that it will replace your laptop screen tomorrow.

  5. This is what Transmeta needs to be successful by RebornData · · Score: 4

    As is pointed out 1000 times in the responses to any article about Transmeta, reducing processor power consumption alone won't give you a notebook with great battery life. The display has been a big reason for that.

    If OLEDs live up to their promise, low-power processors like Crusoe will become much more attractive.

  6. Because... by hey! · · Score: 5

    color increases the information density of a display. Take a good road map and photocopy it in black and white. It is still usable, but much less so. For PDA mapping, color is essential, since so much more data must be crammed into less area.

    When used simply as decoration color can be a problem. Used with restraint it has excellent applications, such as the simple way blue and purple underlined text are used to represent links on a web page. Of course if the text is spangled with random color and typographic oddities then color capability would be a drawback, because its just one more distracting miscue.

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    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  7. mlp by ravrazor · · Score: 3

    You can find out more about OLED from the company working on it, Universal Display Corporation

  8. Re:Why Color? by silicon_synapse · · Score: 3

    I agree color displays are currently hard on the eyes. What I would LIKE to see is a color display that doesn't emit ANY light. I want the pixels to change color and appear as any normal object, not a big flat light. Books don't emit light, why should a computer display? I know, I know. Easier said than done. If I'm still breathing when such tech comes around, I'll be one of the first to grab it.


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  9. The real ultimate display by NoNeeeed · · Score: 4

    The problem with these is that they still have to emit light. There are two problems with this. The first is that they use power (not much, but some). Second (if my memory of my User Interface Design course serves me right) the eye is not designed to focus on emmitted light, it prefers reflected. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, but it is why it is nicer to read a book, than a computer screen (if you ignore the refresh problem). LCDs, while being able to work on reflected light, just loos too much of the light they reflect, too many layers or something (have to ask my sister, Phd in LCD physics).

    The ideal display would be one where you could have a surface that had good reflective properties and could be dynamically changed. I know that MIT are working on a n ink system that you can effectively turn on and off by running it through a kind of laser printer, allowing you to repeatedly re-print onto a piece of paper (I think they managed to reprint hundreds of thousands of times without degredation). If you could do that quickly without the extra machinery then you would have the perfect display, god knows how you would get colour though. mabey some kind of electrically sensetive pigment. Obviously you would have to light it, but only as much as a paper book.

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    Paul Leader
  10. Re:again ? by grammar+nazi · · Score: 3
    Give it some time, waspleg. Advances in materials science that lead to things such as thinner and cheaper LCDs take time. Now that we have thinner LCDs, it will take some time for materials science to make it cheaper and then it won't be vaporware. The /. LCD stories are still very interesting.

    You should respect the materials scientists and materials engineers. They don't make things; They make things better.

    By the way, the grammar in you post is terrible. Please us capitalization and punctuation in all of your future posts.

    Thank you.

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    Keeping /. free of grammatical errors for ~5 years.
  11. More OLED Info... by imadork · · Score: 3

    ... from Kodak.