Apple rumored to have ordered small batch of Micro LED screens for testing
A supply chain report suggests that Apple is already looking beyond OLED for future products, with the company said to be taking steps for trial production of Micro LED screens in the second half of 2017.
A report on Wednesday from DigiTimes, citing sources in the supply chain, reports that a small batch of micro LED screens will be produced in Taoyuan, Taiwan for evaluation for future inclusion in Apple products.
Allegedly, the initiative is spearheaded by personnel and technologies gained from Apple's acquisition of LuxVue in May 2014. The company was rumored to be behind display technology used in Google Glass, and held the patent for a touch display that incorporates sensing technology embedded in a device's screen before it was transferred to Apple.
DigiTimes does generally provide accurate information from within Apple's supply chain, but has a poor track record for predicting Apple's future product plans.
Micro LED screens promise greater contrast, faster response times, and lower energy use as compared to LCD screens. The technology is oriented towards watch displays, and smartphones.
The first batch of chips is said to implement chip bonding onto a TFT substrate.
The technology was first developed in 2000. So far, technological issues in production have held up mass production and commercialization of the technology.
A report on Wednesday from DigiTimes, citing sources in the supply chain, reports that a small batch of micro LED screens will be produced in Taoyuan, Taiwan for evaluation for future inclusion in Apple products.
Allegedly, the initiative is spearheaded by personnel and technologies gained from Apple's acquisition of LuxVue in May 2014. The company was rumored to be behind display technology used in Google Glass, and held the patent for a touch display that incorporates sensing technology embedded in a device's screen before it was transferred to Apple.
DigiTimes does generally provide accurate information from within Apple's supply chain, but has a poor track record for predicting Apple's future product plans.
Micro LED screens promise greater contrast, faster response times, and lower energy use as compared to LCD screens. The technology is oriented towards watch displays, and smartphones.
The first batch of chips is said to implement chip bonding onto a TFT substrate.
The technology was first developed in 2000. So far, technological issues in production have held up mass production and commercialization of the technology.
Comments
microLED seems to one technology that needs enough money behind it to overcome these problems. If Apple is throwing that money in, then I've got hopes for it. If they think the ongoing R&D costs are too high, they will abandon it. That's what they do. I hope they see through to the end with these tests.
But what I'd really like to see is a brighter display, or one much more legible in bright sunlight. My S2's display looks great in any light but most outdoor daylight and especially bright sunlight. It's legible but just barely. At over twice the nits of other Watches, it doesn't look like twice the brightness, and it's definitely washed out in daylight.
My abandoned Pebble's crude, ugly display was at least instantly legible in bright sunlight. Sucked everywhere else though.
there is no reason why this can't be used for large Tvs as well. It, in theory anyway, scales up very well.
OLED has a limited amount of brightness, because it's very sensitive to heat, which becomes more significant the brighter a display becomes. So it's kind of a limiting factor. microLED doesn't have the same sensitivity, and so, can be driven harder, just like regular LEDs. You'll never see a high brightness bulb made with OLEDs, but you could see one with MicroLED. Though it might be too expensive for that.
It's an interesting question. Probably not. One major reason Apple gave for using it is that since the light is self generated, it doesn't need the backlight, which takes up room. As room is at a premium in the Watch, LCD was out because of that alone.
but also, with a watch whose themes are mostly black, unless you choose a picture background for the display, the noted lower power usage as the display drops below an average of 50%, over LCD, helps battery life. In fact, I've found that battery life is dependent on which background you choose. A couple if hours difference, if you use the Watch a lot.
oh, and while this has nothing to do with the discussion directly, talking about the battery life reminded me of something. I'm trying the app Cardiogram, which can take continuous reading of heart rate. It's part of a study being done. Normally, I get a good two days of battery, because I don't use the GPS all that much, though I keep the display at the brightest setting. Suddenly, after a half day, I'm getting notice that the battery is running out. It's because the two green LEDs on the back are on all the time, taking measurements. Wow! It didn't mention that. I just turned the continuous measurement function off for now.
just shows that there are a lot of things that can significantly affect battery life.
back to the discussion. MIcroLED is supposed to be noticeably more efficient than either OLED, or LCD, which is dependent on an led backlight, after all. LCD is inefficient because the backlight is on all the time, covers the entire screen, and needs to force its way through the polarized LCD, which cuts off a lot of the backlight. Yet still, OLED is so inefficient (yes, it really is!) that even though it generates its light directly, it's still less bright than LCD. MIcroLED should be able to be made brighter than either.
As we all know that smaller screens, just like smaller chips, can give better yields, the same thing should be true here, certainly in the beginning. I would be very surprised if this came out in an iPad or notebook first.
in fact, Apple has a major problem here. How is this going to be marketed? If it's first on the Watch, but people believe it will be next in the phone, what happens to phone sales meanwhile? If they come out with it on the Watch and phone simultaneously, then what happens to iPad and notebook sales? And if they come out with it fro the Macbook Pro 15" model, what happens to iMac sales?
this. is something they need to think about very carefully.
I predict that if we're going to see OLED in a future iPhone that we'll also see a UI that works to compliment the display's power needs, in much the same way as watchOS was designed. Even then, there are apps and webpages that will still be mostly white in color so I'm curious what the overall benefit will be for an iDevice.
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2017/05/foxconn-sharp-to-acquire-a-us-micro-led-display-startup.html
Micro-LED can certainly be scaled up. Consider Sony's CLEDIS (I saw their 30 foot wide screen--it was spectacular):
https://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-monitors/resource.latest.bbsccms-assets-cat-mondisp-latest-CLEDISLargeDisplaySolutionWide.shtml
(For smaller displays, it may well be that mobile device size displays will come before TV size displays due to the particular manufacturing methods involved.)
Here's a pretty good article comparing LCD-OLED-micro-LED:
http://www.ledinside.com/news/2016/11/can_micro_led_challenge_lcd_and_oled_market_position
I was just responding to some of the comments suggesting that micro-LED displays will first appear in smaller displays for whatever reason. The Sony example is there to say that huge displays already exist.