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

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.

14 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)

  2. 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.

  3. 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 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.
    2. 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.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. 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.

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    -- 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.

  5. 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.
  6. 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*
  7. 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.
  8. 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.