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First Dual-emission OLED Display in a Phone
roc_face writes "Japanese electronics joint-venture company ELDis has come up with the world's first dual-emission organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display for a mobile phone. This means the screen can be viewed from both sides. It was on display at the annual Flat Panel Display exposition in Tokyo this week."
Am I missing something? The /. summary is almost as long as the article itself.
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Wouldn't that mean that all the text on one side of the screen would come out backwards?
How useful is that?
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
They consume much less power than current devices and have faster response times.
;-)
This seems like a much more interesting fact about them than that they can be viewed from both sides. I suppose one could take advantage of the dual-viewable nature, but it seems like something we already have an adaquate solution for: place a screen on each surface you want to have a screen on. Duh!
On the other hand, I suppose the 2 sided viewability could be potentially beneficial to hybrid tablet PCs, which until now have had to rely on fragile-looking swivel mechanisms to rotate the screen between laptop and tablet functionality.
Any indication as to whether or not the images on each side are identical (i.e. the back is a mirror image of the front) or if they can be controlled independantly?
This Sig Kills Fascists
This is indeed great for status display on a device like a phone.
The problem now is in tablet devices- we're seeing a shift to proper capacitative pads, instead of the topcoating matrix used in, say, early Palms and Psions. To create a 'convertible' PDA out of one of these, you're stuck with the older technology- and you'll need to apply it to both sides.
I also wonder how well these can render black; do they have an LCD layer sandwiched in the middle?
Verdict: Cool for embedding a TV in your living room window, if you don't plan to watch any porn. (Now, what if it were transmissive, but with microreflectors behind the OLED cells, just enough to aim the light one way and block/diffuse/blur it in the other?)
I wonder if they have a version that has or can make the pixels clear.
That would be cool. Imagine a large wall that has graphics on it but is also translucent. You know, like those screens you always see in sci-fi movies. Add some touch sensors...
The ratio of people to cake is too big
There's all this talk about "ELDis", but I can't seem to find them on the net. Anyone have an URL for them?
Also, I remember an article in Scientific American a couple of years ago about trying to create a display that was made of small particles, which could be rotated (or something like that) into the proper position to show the proper color. It was proposed as a great idea for e-books. First, because b&w was easiest. Second, because once the particles where in the proper position, no more power needed to be applied to the screen, they would just stay put, which meant that the only power consumption was in turning pages. Anyway, anyone know whatever happened to that project?
Ok guys, the major problem with OLED's is lifetime. In particular, they die after a certain number of Coulombs of charge have been pumped through them (while they are at a given temperature! increase the temp by 10 deg C and the lifetime drops in half!). So this means the total number of photons you get out is limiting. You want it bright so you can see it outside as well. This means that you generally want ALL the photons going to the viewer (using reflective matrix or lenticular material, etc.) to help do this. If half the photons go out the back, you have to drive it twice as hard to get the same usable brightness! Bad idea...
See http://www.usdc.org/technical/downloads/Web_Report _0101/sld027.htm which is a Philips slide saying a 640x480 display will draw 28W. Not for my laptop, thanks. This is why all the bigger displays are 1 off demos for hype, and only the very small ones (about 2" diagonal max) are in production.
The other big problem is phosphor life which varies with colour (blue is worst) and getting 10k hours is very difficult unless temperature is kept moderate.
However, these displays look very good, although maybe too good for reasonable privacy because the viewing angle is TOO wide to my mind.
IMHO, you won't these even competing with TFTs until 2007.
http://www.universaldisplay.com/toled.php
Soon we'll see all kinds of different neat OLED tech. Smart windows can be transparent, with a lo-rez LCD layer forming solid black backgrounds behind the windows of a transparent OLED display panel. You can imagine embedding this on a mirror or anywhere there is a glass surface, providing full-contrast see-thru windows. Imagine bank tellers and ticket counters of the future -- the display will be right in the middle of the transaction area, with both parties seeing the same image, flipped appropriately on either side. Cool stuff. I want a 50 inch diagonal fishtank that turns into a color television when switched on!