Fortunately, more and more manufacturers are betting on OLED panels for their phones. This is a technology that has been with us for a few decades on a commercial level (the The 2003 Samsung E700 had an external OLED screen)but which really started to attract attention in the mobile segment with the launch of the mythical Samsung i9000, the first Samsung Galaxy S.
Since then, the market has evolved a lot, as well as the OLED panels that have been integrated improvements in resolution, response, brightness and whose shapes are starting to really benefit with the arrival of folding mobiles. Then, and with the idea that you know what the technology of the panel of your mobile is about, we are going to tell you What types of OLED panels are most used in current phones?.
OLED
An OLED panel (organic light emitting diode the organic light-emitting diode) is formed by thousands of diodes capable of generating light by themselves. They have an organic material -like carbon- that reacts to electrical stimulation and ultimately allowing pixels to be turned on and off individually.
In an LCD panel and its variants, there is a backlight source -backlight- that evenly illuminates the entire panel, as well as other superimposed layers to enhance characteristics such as contrast.
Since this does not happen on an OLED panel, these are thinner by requiring fewer layers, they are more “malleable”, they can offer more vivid colors, they are more efficient and, in addition, they allow to obtain a better contrast because when a pixel must reproduce a black color, it turns off directly. That’s why we have phones with Always-on Display technologies.
It is, say, the technology behind the other types of OLED panels that we see today in mobile phones, televisions, virtual reality viewers or watches and over the years it has been refined to adapt OLED panels to more specific uses.
With curiosity, mobiles generally don’t use “basic” OLED screensSince for smartphones, the technology we will talk about below is a little better, but you can see examples such as the Huawei P50 Pro or the Pixel 5. And that it is more malleable than an LCD we allowed to see a mobile like the Samsung Galaxy Round in 2013, with a striking curved screen.
AMOLED
AMOLED is, in addition to a variant of OLED technology, a registered trademark of Samsung. are the acronyms of active matrix organic light emitting diode active matrix of organic light emitting diodes. Basically like OLED, but with that “active matrix”.
This technology adds an active layer that regulates the current that passes through each pixel and, therefore, the brightness is controlled more precisely, being able to obtain higher levels and, in addition, larger diagonals while maintaining energy efficiency and panel quality.
On the matrix, it combines green pixels between blues and reds, so those green pixels have more presence, but they’re a little smaller than the other two. And, thanks to AMOLED screens, various technologies have been developed.
SO, we see the Super AMOLED (with a digitizer between the layers of the panel, and not just on top, to improve sensitivity), Super AMOLED Plus (with a matrix more similar to that of RGB, with green, red and blue having the same size) or variations of Dynamic AMOLED (better brightness control and superior HDR capabilities).
Samsung has a lot of technologies and takes advantage of them in mobiles of different formats. The Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 Ultra are Dynamic AMOLED 2X.
It is the same panel, but with flat sides in the case of the first and curved in the second. The Galaxy Z Fold 4 or the Galaxy Z Flip 4 also use this panel and the format, being foldable, changes completely, which makes it a fairly adaptable technology.
Something interesting is that Not only Samsung uses AMOLED screens. The recently launched realme GT3 uses an AMOLED panel, the Xiaomi 13 or the Honor Magic5 Lite also and we can see these panels on the OPPO Find N2 Flip which is a direct competitor of Samsung’s Flip.
And, eye, Samsung supplies screens to Apple for making the iPhoneAlthough, as we see in cases like the iPhone 14 Pro, Apple is making its design changes to bring these panels up to its standards.
P-OLED
Although the OLED technology is not from Samsung (Actually Sony was one of the companies that got the most out of OLED in its early days) I think it’s become clear that it’s the South Korean company that gets the most out of it, both in its devices and by selling its panels to third parties.
However, LG is another big player in this industry.. They don’t make cellphones anymore (the LG Wing being one of their latest weird creations) but they do supply panels and have registered the P-OLED or Plastic OLEDs (polymer light emitting diode).
It is an OLED panel, but with the matrix substrate is plastic instead of glass. This allows them to weigh less, be more flexible (which is why LG has experimented a lot with curved panels) and be a bit cheaper.
There aren’t too many mobile phones currently using this type of panel, since Samsung cornered the market, and they had a serious reputational issue with the Pixel 2. This is the panel that Google chose and there had several issues such as viewing angles. which distorted the colors (it looked blue at minimum) and the infamous burning problem.
If that sounds like a lot, wait: there are other types of OLED panels
Going back to the LG Wing, it was a curious mobile as it mounted two OLED technologies: one screen had the P-OLED panel while the secondary, the one below, had a G-OLED panel.
We are not going to go into detail on all types of OLED panels. that exist because we would not finish and, in addition, the objective was to see the main types of panels that we have in current mobiles (Samsung being the one that dominates the market), but we are going to give a few lines of each one for you have a better general idea.
- G-OLED- Glass OLEDs. This one’s curious because it’s very similar to AMOLED, with glass as the transmission film, but LG used it for the LG G8s ThinQ, along with the aforementioned Wing’s secondary display.
- TOLED – Transparent OLED. Transparent OLED panels. They have a cathode that faces one side and an anode that reflects light on the other. When the LEDs are off, the panel is 70-85% transparent and we’ve seen examples from LG and Xiaomi, the Mi TV Lux.
- SOLE- stacked OLED. This is an OLED panel that orders the pixels differently. In a traditional panel, each pixel has a red, blue, and green sub-pixel, whereas in a SOLED these are stacked on top of each other.
- FOLE- Soft OLED. Its name tells us everything: flexible OLED panels. They are inexpensive to produce because they can be made by “rolls”.
- WOLED- White OLED. To the traditional RGB, it adds a white pixel. This improves the durability of the panel, but the white pixels absorb a lot of light and the resulting brightness is lower.
- UHPD YOU ARE – Ultra High Pixel Density OLED. The name is quite descriptive and it is an AMOLED with immense pixel density. It goes from a group of pixels at a distance of 77.3 microns to a tiny 13.4 microns, reaching a beastly density of 2,228 pixels per inch. Something like this would be great for VR goggles, but it’s still far from commercial.
- MOLD – OLED microcavity. Trials began in 1999 to apply strong light directionality using dielectric and metallic mirrors. It could increase the light intensity up to five times. They are not suitable for devices such as mobiles.
- QD-OLED- Quantum Dot-OLED. This technology is being commercialized and it is Samsung that has taken the lead. It’s a cross between QLED and OLED that results in higher brightness and a wider color space thanks to quantum dots. Use blue light to generate the other two primaries.
There are other types, but most are experimental. or whose applications are not possible for technical reasons or simply because later models were better.
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