Watch Effect: Apple's first OLED display product could hint at more to come

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 38
    maestro64maestro64 Posts: 5,043member
    lkrupp wrote: »

    This is part of the reason I stick with Apple products. While other manufacturers immediately jump on the latest technology bandwagon solely for the purpose of touting specs Apple tends to study the matter for a while before adopting. There’s always a downside to the latest, greatest mentality. For OLED it was/is apparently the color issue. Apple waits for the tech to evolve sufficiently before it puts it in the products. That means the tech usually works as advertised when the product is released. I’d rather wait than have the latest, greatest not live up to expectations and the hype. I chuckle at the techie wannabes who babble on about CPUs, AMOLED, sensors, memory, with no appreciation as to how it will work or benefit the user. 

    I have to agree, I worked in technology for a long time and seen may fair share of bleeding edge technology and been involved in the evaulation of them. The marketing folks just want to say they have it, and engineer fight to convince them it is not ready yet. The best way to know the difference between a technolohgy, marketing or a product company is how they use tech and when the deploy it. Apple is a product company as you pointed out Apple has always balanced all the needs. There are so many people out there who put down companies because they are not using the biggest badest tech out there and they have no clue what they are talking about and do not even realize what they are seeing and using does not even work well.

    When OLED came out and Apple did not adopted lead me to believe there are downsides which most of use have no clue about which is driving them not to use it.

    I see why apple is using it on the watch, the trade off is battery life in this case over color accuracy and usability. I did not know specifically why Apple used the OLED on the watch and why it was black background, but I did share my suspision with a friend just other day and said it has to be for battery life especially the black background. I will tell you the black background makes it harder to quickly look at the watch and read or observe what is happening on the display. Light on dark is generally not as good as Dark on light background.
  • Reply 22 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    So far, no OLEd screen offers any efficiency advantages over a good LCD screen. Maybe someday, but they keep promising it, and it never arrives.
  • Reply 23 of 38
    robin huberrobin huber Posts: 3,958member
    Where's Ireland? Wasn't he a big OLED fan? Time for a victory lap.
  • Reply 24 of 38
    bkkcanuckbkkcanuck Posts: 864member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Right_said_fred View Post

     

    I have designed a few OLED displays into products, some had 1/2 life of 20,000 hours. Thats only two years if the display is on all the time. Your cell phone display may only be on for say 60 minutes per day, so half-life of 20,000 hours would be no issue.

    When used say in macbook it would be a problem for most. My macbook retina screen is on 50 hours a week minimum, my tv, probably 15


    I am also of the understanding that OLED also tends to suffer from long-term burn in.  For a TV where the image is constantly changing because of moving videos, it is not a big issue... but for devices that have a constant image (menu bar, dock area, etc.) in specific regions it would be more of an issue.  My understanding is that the energy savings is overrated and depends highly on how many pixels are on and how many are off (with displays that are on more than off it would not save as much energy - but for things like watches where it is off more than on it would be considerable).   Technology might sound promising for certain devices, but not necessarily all scenarios.

  • Reply 25 of 38
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bkkcanuck View Post

     

    I am also of the understanding that OLED also tends to suffer from long-term burn in.  For a TV where the image is constantly changing because of moving videos, it is not a big issue... but for devices that have a constant image (menu bar, dock area, etc.) in specific regions it would be more of an issue.  My understanding is that the energy savings is overrated and depends highly on how many pixels are on and how many are off (with displays that are on more than off it would not save as much energy - but for things like watches where it is off more than on it would be considerable).   Technology might sound promising for certain devices, but not necessarily all scenarios.


    ha, i guess burn in is possible - i know I’ve certainly burned a few images in on various displays while designing and testing interfaces, even crappy TNN LCD can burn in if you drive with DC, i.e. don’t get your ac waveform on a 50% duty cycle. 

    i think there was an issue with some early laptops that had the windows logo burnt in (poor things)
  • Reply 26 of 38
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member



    Maybe the iPhone 7 will get an OLED-based display next year.

    I'd be very surprised if this year's iPhone (6S?) has it.

     

    Then again, the 5S got TouchID hardware in an odd "speed bump" year.

    The extra space freed up by an OLED panel could be used for, yes, you guessed it.

    A bigger battery.  Not sure the enclosure needs to get much thinner than the 6 already is.

  • Reply 27 of 38
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,198member

    Samsung and LG may have demanded Apple pay far too much for OLED panels, in order to keep a competitive advantage to themselves (or be highly profitable in the unlikely event Apple would agree to the high prices).

  • Reply 28 of 38
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,727member
    aelegg wrote: »
    This is completely off topic, and a little absurd.

    Leaving aside all logic, imagine a Gold digital crown could be ordered installed on an Aluminum or Stainless Steel model.

    One would have a little touch of bling, but not $10,000 worth.

    Nahhh.  Bad idea I guess.

    It just popped into my head while looking at the watch picture in this article.

    "What if someone just wanted a gold crown......"

    Buy the steel watch and gold plate the crown yourself. :)
  • Reply 29 of 38
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,727member
    maestro64 wrote: »
    I have to agree, I worked in technology for a long time and seen may fair share of bleeding edge technology and been involved in the evaulation of them. The marketing folks just want to say they have it, and engineer fight to convince them it is not ready yet. The best way to know the difference between a technolohgy, marketing or a product company is how they use tech and when the deploy it. Apple is a product company as you pointed out Apple has always balanced all the needs. There are so many people out there who put down companies because they are not using the biggest badest tech out there and they have no clue what they are talking about and do not even realize what they are seeing and using does not even work well.

    When OLED came out and Apple did not adopted lead me to believe there are downsides which most of use have no clue about which is driving them not to use it.

    I see why apple is using it on the watch, the trade off is battery life in this case over color accuracy and usability. I did not know specifically why Apple used the OLED on the watch and why it was black background, but I did share my suspision with a friend just other day and said it has to be for battery life especially the black background. I will tell you the black background makes it harder to quickly look at the watch and read or observe what is happening on the display. Light on dark is generally not as good as Dark on light background.

    Also, once Apple do decide a technology is ready for prime time their buying power nearly always leads to a massive drop in the price of said technology.
  • Reply 30 of 38
    docno42docno42 Posts: 3,755member
    But having seen an LG OLED 4k display vs a Panasonic 4k display?

    No competition.  OLED blows it out the water.  Inky Blacks.  Beautiful colour.

    Price.  There's the rub.

    Yup. OLED will be a worthy successor to my plasma when my plasma finally dies. At least I hope so. Apple getting into OLED will hopefully kick some of those economies of scale arguments into high gear.

    Price isn't the only rub with OLED - burn in on it is pretty bad. Fry's in Las Vegas has two of the LG OLED displays on a display (they have been there since CES) and I noticed last month when I was looking at them again they had significant burn in of the LG logos :(

    But the volume will be positive. The more manufacturers that get experience churning them out, the better! I can't wait to get rid of @^#$! LCD displays. Hate them. Grey goo, motion blur - ugh. Can't wait for OLED to mature. Hurry up!
  • Reply 31 of 38
    docno42docno42 Posts: 3,755member
    melgross wrote: »
    So far, no OLEd screen offers any efficiency advantages over a good LCD screen.

    Huh? Between blue shift and burn in, with so many drawbacks if it didn't have dramatic differences in efficiency (only power pixels lit up, not filter light through an always on backlight) why would Apple not only pick OLED but change the interface from white focused to black focus to better leverage the inherit power savings of OLED?

    Unless I'm completely misunderstanding your comment it seems completely nonsensical to me.
  • Reply 32 of 38
    curtis hannahcurtis hannah Posts: 1,833member
    1983 wrote: »
    Apart from colour accuracy there's also, from what I understand a longevity issue with OLEDs too, particularly the blue pixel part of the display. Still, both issues are probably on the verge of being sorted. For that reason Apple might finally switch to OLED with next years iPhone 7.
    I've heard this, something like Oled can have 1/2 to 1/3 the time.
    cnocbui wrote: »

    This is a load of nonsense based on a test done with the very first consumer OLED device, a near experimental TV released by Sony in around 2007.  There have been 7 - 8 generations worth of development in OLEDs since this single test was done.  My phone is near 5 years old now and there has been no degradation in the Blue in its OLED display.

    Here it is next to my MBPR.  The blue is still fine after 5 years of daily use:

    <img alt="" class="lightbox-enabled" data-id="57111" data-type="61" src="http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/57111/width/500/height/1000/flags/LL" style="; width: 500px; height: 375px">
    5 year old phone isn't the expectancy for its burnout(if I took a guess, 7 years). Either way a TV/Computer is to last much longer then a phone.
    I have designed a few OLED displays into products, some had 1/2 life of 20,000 hours. Thats only two years if the display is on all the time. Your cell phone display may only be on for say 60 minutes per day, so half-life of 20,000 hours would be no issue.
    When used say in macbook it would be a problem for most. My macbook retina screen is on 50 hours a week minimum, my tv, probably 15
    Yep, what I just said.
    Have you see the color scheme of iOS?
    It's bright and colorful.
    Choosing oled will just drain the battery extremely fast. In fact, that's why Apple did it:
    It looks shape and dynamic. And make any AMOLED device failed to copy it.
    The most they could do is less bright.

    In fact, Apple Watch use OLED because they can reduce the power by making all background with black.
    Try doing that with iOS? You know even the background color of AI is white, right?
    It's not like Apple could ask the world to use black as background color tomorrow.

    If you want iOS screen blend with the border, tell Apple to stop offering white front panel.
    Apple Watch just solve it like any black iPhone did since the first one.
    Agree there other then the borders can't be simply fixed, but Oled wouldn't help. Also it is sorta a joke that android(dominantly Oled) still followed.
    commodus wrote: »
    Like others have hinted, OLED is finally catching up.  Look at the Galaxy S6: that OLED is bright, vivid and (if you use a neutral video setting) still pretty color-accurate.  The battery life is sub-par, but that's more a virtue of Samsung cramming a Quad HD display into a 5.1-inch phone while lowering the battery capacity.  A 1080p screen using tech like that would probably be much gentler on battery life.

    With that said, I don't know if Apple needs to do OLED this time around.  If it's needed for Force Touch, maybe, but display changes are uncharacteristic of Apple in "iPhone s" generations.
    I seriously doubt Oled this year, in fact why they won't is clearly stated.
    aelegg wrote: »
    This is completely off topic, and a little absurd.

    Leaving aside all logic, imagine a Gold digital crown could be ordered installed on an Aluminum or Stainless Steel model.

    One would have a little touch of bling, but not $10,000 worth.

    Nahhh.  Bad idea I guess.

    It just popped into my head while looking at the watch picture in this article.

    "What if someone just wanted a gold crown......"
    Likely find it online modified. But there already enough apple watch variants.
    netrox wrote: »
    First of all, it is much more efficient to let light go through on a LCD panel than to make a pixel black. In order to have a black pixel, the LCD must diffuse (darken) the pixel and that is consuming a lot more energy than to let the light shine through.

    With OLED, it's the opposite. The black pixel needs no electricity but it is NOT energy efficient if you have a screen full of webpages or documents as they will consume MUCH more energy than LCD.

    That's why Apple has the iOS brightly colored - it's more energy efficient that way. You don't really have much choice because the entire panel of LCD light is on and it takes more energy to darken pixels.

    When you spend most of the time surfing the web or reading docs or apps with lots of bright colors, then LCD makes more sense overall.

    OLED makes sense for an Apple watch but not for iPhone. The Apple watch doesn't need to fill the screen with bright colors and it was never intended to be on for prolonged period of time.
    Your talibg certain types of LCD, not Ips(IOS/Mac)
    konqerror wrote: »
    Not for Apple products. IPS is normally black.
    See, namely the super LCD from HTC(one of the few Lcd Android companies).
    melgross wrote: »
    So far, no OLEd screen offers any efficiency advantages over a good LCD screen. Maybe someday, but they keep promising it, and it never arrives.
    I know, it's a joke. I'm curious the difference between a prototype LCD apple watch, it might be helping some.
  • Reply 33 of 38
    cnocbuicnocbui Posts: 3,613member

    Quote:


    Originally Posted by Curtis Hannah View Post





    I've heard this, something like Oled can have 1/2 to 1/3 the time.

    5 year old phone isn't the expectancy for its burnout(if I took a guess, 7 years). Either way a TV/Computer is to last much longer then a phone.

     

    If OLED still had a problem with the blues, then I think it would be showing up now.  It would fade with time and would be showing problems now, not suddenly fall off a cliff at 7, 10 or whatever magical period you can dream up.

     

    Why are you and others saying that OLED has this mysterious longevity problem making it unsuitable for use in laptop screens and TVs when you can walk into a shop and buy an OLED TV?  The current generation of OLED, which must be about five generations of development more advanced than the one in my phone, is said to have a longevity similar to a plasma TV - 50,000 - 100,000 hours.  Is that not long enough?

     

    Quote:


     

     As for OLED lifespan, during a UHD 4K panel at last month’s CES week in NYC, LG’s Director of New Product Development Tim Alessi told the audience LG’s OLED lifespan is the same as plasma which puts it between 50,000 and 100,000 hours. According to a 2012 AC Nielsen survey, Americans over the age of 2 years old, spend 34 hours a week watching television. Using the 50,000 hour figure this LG OLED UHD 4K TV’s panel lifespan is over 28 years.

    http://hdguru.com/lgs-ultra-high-definition-4k-oled-tv-price-leaked/



     

    If I had listened to all the anti-plasma nonsense of burn-in issues back when I bought my TV, I would have been staring at an inferior LCD TV for the past five years rather than enjoying a great TV.  It's quite amazing how negative sentiments to new technologies persist long after companies have made advances that render the old wives tales moot.

  • Reply 34 of 38
    bkkcanuckbkkcanuck Posts: 864member
    Quote:

     

    Why are you and others saying that OLED has this mysterious longevity problem making it unsuitable for use in laptop screens and TVs when you can walk into a shop and buy an OLED TV?  The current generation of OLED, which must be about five generations of development more advanced than the one in my phone, is said to have a longevity similar to a plasma TV - 50,000 - 100,000 hours.  Is that not long enough?

     


     

    There is a difference between TV use and monitor use.  TV use all the colours are changing brightness changing etc.  A monitor has the same colours at the same brightness all the time in certain areas of the screen.  If you bought one of the old CRT televisions and watched it all the time it would work well.... but if you used the same CRT as a monitor you could have burn-in problems.... which is why making sure your screen saver switched the monitor off after a few minutes of disuse was important to add to the computers.   So just because it has that longevity of normal use for a TV does not mean it will for a monitor.

  • Reply 35 of 38
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by cnocbui View Post

     

    Quote:

    ...  The current generation of OLED, which must be about five generations of development more advanced than the one in my phone, is said to have a longevity similar to a plasma TV - 50,000 - 100,000 hours.  Is that not long enough?

    .


    Can you source a spec sheet that claims 50,000 hours use for an OLED TV?

    I can't - LG is shy, and measles around it. Dont get me wrong, i would have no issue believing that the OLED life is good enough for TV type usage, whereas my MBr is on all day at work.

    Please share 

  • Reply 36 of 38
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,213member
    Can you source a spec sheet that claims 50,000 hours use for an OLED TV?
    I can't - LG is shy, and measles around it. Dont get me wrong, i would have no issue believing that the OLED life is good enough for TV type usage, whereas my MBr is on all day at work.
    Please share 
    I see mentions of the 50K hours with regard to lighting, ie Kaneka, but not a TV display. I'm curious too.
  • Reply 37 of 38
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post





    I see mentions of the 50K hours with regard to lighting, ie Kaneka, but not a TV display. I'm curious too.



    yes, and even their blue panel Life time (LT70) is only 5000 hours.

     

  • Reply 38 of 38
    cnocbuicnocbui Posts: 3,613member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bkkcanuck View Post

     

     So just because it has that longevity of normal use for a TV does not mean it will for a monitor.


     

    Doesn't mean it wont, either.

     

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Right_said_fred View Post

     

    Can you source a spec sheet that claims 50,000 hours use for an OLED TV?

    I can't - LG is shy, and measles around it. Dont get me wrong, i would have no issue believing that the OLED life is good enough for TV type usage, whereas my MBr is on all day at work.

    Please share 


     

    No, but I couldn't source you a spec-sheet for the plasma panel in my Panasonic TV either.  I did find a 30,000 hrs spec for an LED backlit LCD monitor: http://www.webcitation.org/5xo6yCsg1

     

    I can assure you the cfl back-lit LCD panel in my Powerbook Ti didn't get anywhere near 20,000 hrs before it's brightness was less than half that of when it was new.

     

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Right_said_fred View Post

     



    yes, and even their blue panel Life time (LT70) is only 5000 hours.

     



     

    Actually, as you probably know, it is near impossible to know what the capabilities of leading edge current OLED panels really are, because the information is likely proprietary.  I did find this, which appears to be from 10 years ago:

     

    Quote:


     

    CDT logoCambridge Display Technology (CDT) announces the achievement of another important milestone with the development of blue polymer OLED emitting devices with 100,000 hours lifetime* from an initial luminance of 100cd/m2.

    This latest announcement is one of a series which CDT has made to enable the industry to chart its progress on this key parameter. Figures of 30,000, 70,000 and 80,000 hours (all from 100cd/m2) were published in May, October and December 2004.



    Lifetime is one of the most important parameters which have governed the rate at which PLED technology is adopted commercially, and there is much industry interest in such figures. For this reason CDT has, for the first time, made available a wider range of data around its latest achievement, and included lifetime data for higher initial luminance levels.

    Lifetimes for devices made using the new blue materials at 200cd/m2, 300cd/m2 and 400cd/m2 are greater than 25,000 hours, 10,000 hours and 6,000 hours respectively.



    http://www.oled-info.com/blue_color/cdt_achieves_100_000_hour_blue_polymer_lifetime

     

    Samsung is the world leader in OLED panel manufacture and has more OLED related patents than anyone else and I suspect some of those may relate to longevity performance optimisation.  Given what others were achieving 10 years ago it is probable their current panels have usable longevity.

     

    It's amazing how the issue has been neatly deflected from Apple's possible use of OLED panels in phones to the the far less-likely one of monitors and laptops.  OLED display longevity simply isn't an issue for phones so it is not a credible reason as to why Apple might eschew their use in an iPhone.  Given Anandtech's plaudits for most of Samsung's recent phones and tablets with OLED panels, it is abundantly clear that there are no technical reasons they couldn't employ them if they could get their hands on ones of equal quality.  I suspect supply constraint is the real issue and that Samsung does not have the capacity to manufacture enough panles for both their own and Apple's requirements.

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