[CTSLICK]

Originally Posted by Janak Parekh

Brilliant. Foo, you listening? There's money in this. Get all the manufacturers to pay you an undisclosed sum to deem their display technology to be Foo-compliant(TM).

--janak

The Zen of Palm

The Foo of PocketPC :lol:

[CTSLICK]

Originally Posted by Janak Parekh

Brilliant. Foo, you listening? There's money in this. Get all the manufacturers to pay you an undisclosed sum to deem their display technology to be Foo-compliant(TM).

--janak

The Zen of Palm

The Foo of PocketPC :lol:

[rbrome]

LCD's days are numbered - that much is certain.

OLEDs are great, but there are some problems left to work out...

For one, they really are organic, and they have this annoying tendency to actually die. They lose half their brightness in just a year or two. It's the green and blue materials they're having the most trouble with, which means many current prototypes have a tendency to turn pink, before they go dark. It's easy to make a beautiful prototype for a show like CES, but see what that Sharp display looks like in a couple years... it probably won't look so pretty. The first mainstream application for OLEDs is cell phones - which many people replace every 1-2 years anyway.

Another issue is size - just like LCDs, it's not so easy to make 'em big. That Sharp is about as big as most companies have been able to make them so far. They tend to produce uneven brightness over larger areas. I think Sony has some new technology that lets them make decent 17-inchers, but that's still a few years away from production.

But a lot of companies are spending a lot of money on solving these issues, and the good news is that everyone in the industry is very confident that solutions are on the way soon.

Samsung is already shipping phones in Korea with OLED external (small caller-ID) displays. Sanyo (working with Kodak) is trying to get a phone out by the end of the year with a large OLED main display.

Other promising LCD-replacements include E-Ink and iMOD. No matter which techs win out in the end, LCD is definitely going the way of the Dodo before too long...

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Originally Posted by rbrome

OLEDs are great, but there are some problems left to work out...

That's pretty good info. It's definitely encouraging to hear of so many manufacturers working on OLED technology. I can definitely see this technology explode in mobile phones before they make their way into PDAs, especially in Japan where their cellphones have been generations ahead of the rest of the world for quite a while.

Those pics Jason posted were STUNNING!!! Even if they have to sacrifice the slim-ness... shoot even if they don't result in much smaller PDAs, the display itself is worth the price of admission!!

[Janak Parekh]

Originally Posted by rbrome

That Sharp is about as big as most companies have been able to make them so far. They tend to produce uneven brightness over larger areas.

Good points. It's entirely possible that they rigged the demo to hide the uneven brightness, such as in this picture (as opposed to a solid-color Windows desktop, for example).

--janak

[nirav28]

Actually , what would really be revolutionary, would be flexible displays like what e-ink is developing. Similar to what was shown in the movie "red planet". The flexible disply that scroll out and are thin as cardboards.

Toshiba is doing some interesting work with printing circuits directly on LCD glass displays. Combine that circuit printing technology with OLED or ePaper, and we're going to see PDAs about as thin as credit cards.

I think Kodak was also doing some R&D on using standard inkjet printers to print Flexible illuminated displays and circuits on paper like surface.

[slugnut]

Originally Posted by CTSLICK

It makes all the sense in the world that this technology would make a bee-line for the PDA/Smartphone world. However...

Does it present a marketing problem? This is a situation where we have new technology that costs less and delivers a higher standard. Normally, you release something that incorporates new technology at a higher price. People buy it because they want the higher standard and are willing to fess up the extra money. This is the reverse. If you market better stuff that costs less how do get rid of all the old more expensive stuff that look worse than the new stuff? I'll bet the effort to preserve revenue stream delays the entry of OLED into mass production more than any technological delays.

One thing to note is that manufacturers won't necessarily be lowering the prices of their products if they use OLED technology. They can always say, "Hey, we're introducing this great new display technology in our PDAs and we're not going to raise the price!!" While at the same time they enjoy a greater profit margin resulting from the reduced costs of OLED displays. If this were the case, the sooner manufacturers could get OLED displays to market, the better for them. Just my two cents...

[JMountford]

Just beautiful.. We still are a ways off from seeing these in mass, but the future is looking bright.

[John Cody]

Originally Posted by Janak Parekh

It's entirely possible that they rigged the demo to hide the uneven brightness, such as in this picture (as opposed to a solid-color Windows desktop, for example).

I took those pictures personally and the demo video was pretty diverse and had scenes that were mostly white/one color and I didn't notice any brightness uneveness. I was very impressed.

[malcolmsharp]

Originally Posted by rbrome

LCD's days are numbered - that much is certain.

OLEDs are great, but there are some problems left to work out...

For one, they really are organic, and they have this annoying tendency to actually die. They lose half their brightness in just a year or two. It's the green and blue materials they're having the most trouble with, which means many current prototypes have a tendency to turn pink, before they go dark. It's easy to make a beautiful prototype for a show like CES, but see what that Sharp display looks like in a couple years... it probably won't look so pretty. The first mainstream application for OLEDs is cell phones - which many people replace every 1-2 years anyway.

First of all, the size thing isn't a factor for our little part of the pie. Secondly, until they work out something about the lifespan, even if they do... why not make the screen user replacable? They are thin, right? Just make it a replacment part that requires a hex or something.

Every year or so, you get a new one... try to keep it to about $50 or so. And not only do you make the device better, you have an additional income stream.

Hell, if you can put the screen electronics on the screen, then you can even sell upgradible screens!

[malcolmsharp]

Originally Posted by nirav28

Toshiba is doing some interesting work with printing circuits directly on LCD glass displays. Combine that circuit printing technology with OLED or ePaper, and we're going to see PDAs about as thin as credit cards.

That would be nice for some uses, but not for me. I don't want it too thin! I want something to hold nicely. But yes, if they could make the actual guts that small, that would lead to some interesting devices... like an all in one gaget... PDA, phone, digital camera, voice recorder, portable drive, mp3 player, whatever.