Samsung Displays 7” OLED Display

OLED has been on the forefront of the next wave of digital display technology. Its energy efficiency, flexibility and unmatched brightness and contrast place it on the top of the list for almost all manufacturers who use/make digital displays. Hence, it is no wonder that manufacturers like Samsung are making prototype devices that are using the technology.

Samsung recently participated in the FPD 2009 (Flat Panel Display) event and there they showed off a 7” prototype of a netbook that has an OLED display. As expected, the netbook drew a lot of attention at the event and received a lot of coverage as a result.

This display has a contrast ratio of 1000000:1 and a brightness rating of 300CD/m2. Compared to LCD screens and even plasma screens, these figures are extremely high. Hence, the images on the screen drew a lot of appreciation. The resolution was 1024×600, which is not all that high. But since this is a 7” screen, the ppi (pixsel per inch) was high enough to not draw attention to the lower resolution.

Over all, larger OLED displays are slowly coming out into the open but they remain unattainable for consumer products. We have smaller products with AMOLED displays but OLED screens bigger than 3-4 inches are still too expensive to bring to consumer electronic products. They are currently a sought after feature on handheld products because their brightness allows them to remain readable even in bright daylight conditions.

But the technology is advancing much faster than before in this field and hence we can expect to have cheaper OLED screens soon that will be affordable enough for mass consumption. It is estimated that large consumer OLED displays will arrive sometime around 2012.