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AMOLED Displays Are Now Cheaper To Produce Than LCD (androidauthority.com)

Posted by msmash on from the evolution-of-display dept.

An anonymous reader quotes an article on AndroidAuthority: Optics pundits have been crowing about AMOLED destroying LCD for a while now: they are thinner, brighter, more energy efficient and arguably offer better colors, higher contrast, and deeper saturation than LCD. The biggest barrier stopping AMOLED from taking over as the smartphone display technology of choice has been price. Until now that is. As predicted two years ago, it has only taken 24 months for AMOLED production costs to fall below that of LCD. Production costs in the first quarter for a 5-inch Full HD smartphone display are $14.30 for an AMOLED panel and $14.60 for an LCD display. In the fourth quarter of 2015, these figures were $17.10 and $15.70, respectively. [...] With AMOLED production costs dropping below LCD for the first time, AMOLED panels will soon become the default display technology choice for manufacturers on their mid-range and entry-level devices as well.

36 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. To bad the screens burn in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I like to leave my phone plugged in, next to me on my desk, and in developer mode where keeping the screen on is an option. The icons burn into place eventually. I no longer keep the display on all the time and it sucks I can't simply glance at my phone for weather and other info.

    Has this issue been resolved? Granted my phone is 3 years old now.

    1. Re:To bad the screens burn in... by ickleberry · · Score: 5, Funny

      You are supposed to buy a new phone every year, the industry sees you as a problem customer who can be whipped into compliance with shorter-lasting displays and batteries

    2. Re:To bad the screens burn in... by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 4, Informative

      From what I understand, the blue OLED ages at a faster rate than the rest of the display, which means that it will appear to turn yellow over time. If you have a static image on the display, then it will age unevenly.

      LCD panels don't age in a way that makes the colors change, so they don't get burn in (the closest thing they get to burn in is image persistence, which is only temporary.)

    3. Re:To bad the screens burn in... by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Heh. I was at Best Buy a few days ago and they had this bigTV advertising how awesome it is because it's OLED. It was so awesome that when the demo changed to some moving footage the ghost of the "OLED IS AWESOME!" text was still there.

      Basically they demonstrated not only that those screens burn in but that they do it pretty fast, too! Glad I didn't order this TV through Amazon.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    4. Re:To bad the screens burn in... by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

      From what I understand, the blue OLED ages at a faster rate than the rest of the display, which means that it will appear to turn yellow over time. If you have a static image on the display, then it will age unevenly.

      LCD panels don't age in a way that makes the colors change, so they don't get burn in (the closest thing they get to burn in is image persistence, which is only temporary.)

      They do but less pronounced. Changes in output spectrum due to backlight aging is still enough to make it worthwhile for artists/photo pros to periodically recalibrate. This is also why brightness controls tend to be driven by PWM.

    5. Re:To bad the screens burn in... by ryanmc1 · · Score: 2

      yes, since you are using it at your desk, it is called a weather widget on your computer

  2. dat burn-in tho... by sanosuke001 · · Score: 2

    http://www.alphr.com/realworld...

    I used a music app on my phone for a while and after a few months, it's buttons were permanently burned in because I left the screen on so I could skip songs while driving. It kinda sucked.

    --
    -SaNo
    1. Re:dat burn-in tho... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Shouldn't be a problem with Android or Apple UIs. The UIs change so often that it's very unlikely the image would burn-in.

    2. Re:dat burn-in tho... by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      find a video of a travelling red/black bar and play it for an extended time on the screen. This is how you fixed burn in problems on plasma TV's and it should work the same on an OLED.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. Well that's awesome but... by foxalopex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've always admired OLEDs based screens for their colour accuracy and amazing flatness. With falling costs they would actually make the perfect display. Unfortunately, I am not sure if they resolved the issue of the pixels gradually burning out especially when it comes to blue leaving you with a yellow screen over the long term. It might not matter so much in a phone which typically arn't used more than a few years but that's not something you would want in a TV or monitor.

    1. Re:Well that's awesome but... by jandrese · · Score: 2

      10 years is not very old for a TV set. Back in 2009 when the digital switchover and HD forced the issue, many of the TVs scrapped were from the 80s and 90s. There are no major changes to broadcast TV coming down the pike (3D is dead in the water, 4K gets a big meh from your average household) so no reason to buy a new set unless the old one craps out. I'm sure shitty capacitors will do in a number of those sets, but a good many of them will still be in use in 2019.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
  4. Which AMOLED by afidel · · Score: 2

    Is that a nasty display with horrible color accuracy like the Atrix 4G or a nice quality panel similar to the one used in the Galaxy S5? Because I'd rather have LCD than a bad AMOLED.

    --
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    1. Re:Which AMOLED by Rei · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Indeed. When I got my last phone, which has an IPS display, I compared with two coworkers who had recently gotten phones (similar price range) with AMOLED displays. The color quality was far better on my phone, something they both agreed on. Colour on AMOLED in all cases felt "oversaturated" in some colours while others looked lacking or "off". For anyone who's ever worked with LED grow lights, where your colors are broken down into distinct bands and it messes with your vision, it was that sort of effect on the small scale. In particular, it left the whites not really feeling completely white. The images on theirs also looked blurrier even though we had comparable resolutions.

      I'm not sure why the AMOLED woulds seem blurrier, but the colour issue makes good sense; IPS uses a white LED backlight while AMOLED uses tiny RGB LEDs. White LEDs don't directly emit light; the light hits a phosphor and that emits broader spectrum light. The IPS polarization filters are paired up with colour filters which cut off out-of-band light but do not narrow (to any relevant degree) the spectrum of light passing through them. Color LEDs, however, emit light on a single frequency. It's actually one of their strengths in many contexts. But it's very poor for reproducing accurate colour.

      At least given the state of the technology the last time I compared, I would definitely not switch to AMOLED. If that means my phone is a tad larger and heavier due to the display size and increased battery draw, so be it. I want image quality.

      --
      Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.
    2. Re:Which AMOLED by Rei · · Score: 2

      It's not an issue about the presence or lack of blue light, it's about the quality of the blue. Colour LEDs emit in very narrow bands. And many people (myself included) find narrow-band blue to be really piercing.

      --
      Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.
    3. Re:Which AMOLED by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

      AMOLED displays cause horrible eyestrain for me due to the high-intensity blue lights they emit. What's worse is LCD displays with CCFL backlights have been removed from production monitor/TV panels, so I have no alternative but to use these awful LED displays. Screw manufacturers screwing with our eyesights.

      Look for displays with RGB or GB-R led backlighting or any combination that does not involve crappy white LEDs. A little more expensive found in "professional' displays with wider gamut but worth every penny in my view. These do not have an annoying blue spike in output spectrum that makes everything look strange/dead.

    4. Re:Which AMOLED by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

      Indeed. When I got my last phone, which has an IPS display, I compared with two coworkers who had recently gotten phones (similar price range) with AMOLED displays. The color quality was far better on my phone, something they both agreed on.

      Colour on AMOLED in all cases felt "oversaturated" in some colours while others looked lacking or "off".

      A problem with AMOLED some vendors are taking shortcuts to cut costs using pentile displays with copious amounts of missing subpixels they figure nobody will notice/miss. I think we need better labeling up front so people know exactly what they are buying. I don't know exactly what you saw but your description is a common reaction to crappy pentile displays.

    5. Re:Which AMOLED by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 2

      My guess is that it isn't the narrowband issue that's a problem - the issue is that many of the displays are likely not calibrated or colormatched at all, so a display that has a very wide gamut is using fully saturated primaries when displaying colors that are not supposed to be that saturated.

      If you displayed sRGB "blue" as a fully saturated blue on an AMOLED display, you'd likely wind up with vastly oversaturated colors. To properly take advantage of the display's gamut, you'd have to calibrate it to only display partially saturated primaries for the sRGB primaries, and only display "full saturation" when the content is from a wider-gamut colorspace like Adobe RGB.

      Reality is, it's easier to market an oversaturated display than a "correct" one to most people.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    6. Re:Which AMOLED by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Colour on AMOLED in all cases felt "oversaturated" in some colours while others looked lacking or "off".

      That's not the display's fault, it's the driver / OS. AMOLED can display as perfect of a colour gamut as possible with 3 primary colours. This is a GOOD THING. The problem is when someone then buys such a display and then slaps it into a device that does no colour management on the output. It's the same reason Slashdot looks horribly saturated on my desktop monitor when viewed with Chrome, but looks fine in Firefox (colour management + non standard display).

      In particular, it left the whites not really feeling completely white.

      That's a long levity routine. Let me guess it looked a bit blue? Another cheap way to make LCDs more resistant to the inevitable fade which is the result of blue pixels dying at a faster rate than all others is to make the blue pixels larger. That has a lovely side effect of a blue bias out of the box.

      The images on theirs also looked blurrier even though we had comparable resolutions.

      That's the sub-pixel layout also partly caused by the blue pixels being larger than all others. Using a pentile layout is actually a good thing for displaying things like text, but sucks for straight lines, and except when vendors use it to effectively lie about image resolution. Just like a 12mpxl camera can't actually produce 12 million colour accurate pixels and relies on neighbour interpolation to generate the 12 million pixels on screen, phone vendors were lying about that too.

      Color LEDs, however, emit light on a single frequency. It's actually one of their strengths in many contexts. But it's very poor for reproducing accurate colour.

      That is very much the opposite in both theory and practice. Unfortunately you've been exposed to some bad practices, which is a shame because AMOLED has so much more to offer in terms of colour reproduction than LCDs ever will.

      At least given the state of the technology the last time I compared, I would definitely not switch to AMOLED.

      Give it another go or at least look into it again. You weren't let down by the technology. You were let down by a crappy vendor.

  5. No thanks by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Do you want an LCD with a decades-old lifespan or AMOLED with burn-in problems within a few months?

    1. Re:No thanks by ledow · · Score: 2

      Really?

      My Samsung phone is three years old and has AMOLED screen - not a problem. Girlfriend has the same phone for the same amount of time... no problem.

      And I deliberately disable all screensavers and moving shite on the screen, so it's spends 99% of its powered-on life showing the same icons in the same place.

      I don't know what cheap crap you're buying but it's go nothing to do with the underlying tech of AMOLED.

    2. Re:No thanks by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      manufacturers want the AMOLED.

      they utterly HATE with a passion anyone that keeps a product more than 1 year without buying a new one. Those kinds of customers are scum that are stealing from them.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    3. Re:No thanks by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Informative

      LCD's from a decade ago. I have TONS of LCD monitors with LED back lights that still work perfectly 6-8-10- even 12 years later. Hell I have a pair of ELO touchscreen monitors that are 14 years old that still work great and they have the old CFL backlights.

      anything made today? it's all shit made as cheap as possible to make sure they break.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:No thanks by Solandri · · Score: 2

      You ever wonder why screensavers are called that? Because they were invented to help prevent burn-in on CRTs (the phosphors would degrade with use over time), thus saving the screen. Seriously, this problem was solved decades ago. The only usage where you need to watch out for burn-in is for always-on displays, like airport flight schedule displays.

      On a phone or tablet, you can help by using the device in different orientations or upside down - the software doesn't care, and only the position of the physical volume buttons changes (the screen off button doesn't really matter with AMOLED since it doesn't have a backlight to turn off). Heck, I grab my phone upside down half the time anyway.

      I much prefer this little nuisance over the poor blacks and lousy color saturation (sRGB was a huge step backwards from the NTSC color space that was used in the CRT days) everyone seems to have gotten used to with LCDs.

    5. Re:No thanks by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      Displayport to VGA adapters are easily found. i have two VGA side monitors that run off of displayport connections on the video card by using two $6.95 adapters.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    6. Re:No thanks by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

      Hello manufacturers! My ThinkPad 760XL says hi!

    7. Re:No thanks by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

      What about computers, where program interfaces are always in the same spot in your daily usage?

    8. Re:No thanks by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      15 years ago it was "look at this LCD shit, built down to a price and dies after a few years, dead pixels everywhere, scaling sucks, I'll stick with my trusty 20 year old 20kg CRT thanks!"

      It's just survivor bias. There has been cheap crap forever, we just think older stuff was more reliable because we have some examples of it surviving for a long time. Cars are the worst, people moan that modern ones are too complex and suck while forgetting that the old ones tended to fall apart as everything rusted away after 5 years.

      --
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  6. I wouldn't call the death of LCD just yet. by Agent0013 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For the wall mounted TV panels I have gotten Plasma and love it. I don't really understand why LCD is much more popular because all of the things you would want in a picture seem to lean to Plasma as better. Better contrast, darker blacks, brighter more vibrant colors, better viewing angle. The only thing that LCD has on it's side is better bright light viewing, but my TV is not in the sun-room, so that is not a problem for me and probably most people. And burn-in has not been a problem with the two of them that I have had. On the first one you might see after images for a minute when you left something paused, but they always went away quickly.

    Sometimes there are strange "Sheeple" reasons why some things succeed and other fail in the marketplace.

    --

    -- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
    1. Re:I wouldn't call the death of LCD just yet. by swb · · Score: 3, Informative

      Heat and power consumption? A customer has a plasma set near in a confined space I have to work and it's like standing by a space heater.

  7. Re:Can We Have A Computer Monitor Now? by Sique · · Score: 3, Informative

    You could actually power an LCD with 120 Hz, that's not the problem. There is just no reason to do so, differently than with CRTs. CRTs have a luminescense coating on the inside of the tube. It gets hit by the electron ray (cathode ray, hence the name), and lights up. It takes some time, until it goes out again. If this time is too long, all movements on the screen are blurred. If this is too short, the screen gets too dark and flickers. If we use a stronger cathode ray, the luminescense coating wears out too quickly and burns in. So the only way we can have a bright, non-blurry CRT picture is increasing the frequency. In an ideal world, a picture frequency of around 20 would suffice. Cinemas use 24 pictures per second, and not many complain about the picture flashing too much or movements being blurry. It works, because the time between picture frames is much smaller than the time we see the single picture frame. LCDs at 60 Hz are completely ok, but a CRT at 60 Hz flickers like an old TV set.

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    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  8. Transflective? by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

    Are AMOLED displays available in transflective form? Because I thought that was an LCD-only technology, and to be honest, I'd rather see phones go transflective than a supposedly superior technology that doesn't display anything when unlit, even if the latter has superficial benefits when the screen is "lit".

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    1. Re:Transflective? by Nemyst · · Score: 2

      AMOLED fundamentally works by emitting light from the individual subpixel elements, it's not an LCD and therefore it does not require backlighting to work. That also means it cannot be transflective.

  9. So... by Locke2005 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Will AMOLED customizable jewelry be a thing by this Christmas, or next Christmas?

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  10. Race to the bottom by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

    I want reliable displays that will last for at least a decade without problems. Having suffered thru CRT style burn-in I have no desire to purchase a device prone to the same problems.

  11. Re:And Apple doesn't have it by Locke2005 · · Score: 2

    Haven't you learned by now, you pay them their $99/year AppleCare extortion fee, and they just fix it for you...

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  12. Cheaper in more ways than one by frovingslosh · · Score: 2

    Another important thing about OLEDs is that they have a far lower life expectancy. While that might be fine for a cell phone that you intend to replace every two years, it is not so good when buying that huge wide screen TV for the living room. Assuming that you don't like seeing lots of dead pixels or that you are willing to replace your TV every couple of years. Personally I have avoided OLED TVs for this reason (even more so than because of the previous higher price).

    --
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