tft display vs oled brands

TFT stands for ‘Thin Film Transistor’ – it is a type of LCD that gives higher resolution and better image quality than standard LCDs. These are usually coloured, but Mono is becoming more popular and therefore more readily available.

OLED stands for ‘Organic Light Emitting Diode’. It has a layer of organic compound that emits its own light eliminating the requirement for a backlight. They are super thin, have a really wide viewing angle with exceptional contrast ratios. Some can also be curved, creating all sorts of interesting new applications for example LG’s new ‘wallpaper TV’.

Displays are measured using ‘lumens’, which are also known as ‘nits’. The brightness should be measured in 5 different points on the front of the display to give you an average reading. Adding filters, touch screens or lenses will all decrease the overall brightness of a display so it should always be measured after these add-ons. Some displays are now as bright as 1500 nits or lumens.

This depends on the application and what you want to achieve, this is a very subjective question. LCDs can be very cheap – the older green and black ones (think calculators for example) can be extremely cheap, but they are not as colourful or easy to read as newer technologies. TFTs will give you full colour and a higher solution than an LCD, but they are more difficult to drive and tend to be more expensive. OLED is a relatively new technology. OLEDs are lower power than TFT and offer very good viewing, but have lifetime issues and are only available in smaller sizes.

Capacitive touch is most commonly used in products such as smartphones. It’s used in all sorts of applications currently but it’s difficult to get working. Capacitive is a lot more expensive than resistive but it does enable nice gesture features and has the ability to have a cover lens. Resistive touch screens are much cheaper and easier to drive, but do suffer from a mottled effect over the display and can be damaged easily as there is no cover lens.

OLEDs currently range from 1” to 6” – Please note manufacturers such as LG have much bigger OLED televisions but these are a different technology to those available in the industrial market.

For LCD and TFT displays, most power is consumed by the backlight. If you turn the backlight off on a standard LCD, the display itself can run from batteries for many days.

Nearly all TFTs need to have their backlight on to be able to work, which is why your tablet or phone shuts down the backlight quickly when it detects you are not using it. There are some TFTs that can work with no backlight, but they are unique and expensive.

An OLED is self-emitting, so has no backlight. With an OLED, power consumption is controllable by the user – if you want the battery to last longer then dim the display, or show fewer dots as each dot consumes power.

An LCD will work very well in direct sunlight. We actually use the sunlight as the backlight, as it bounces off the rear and becomes part of the display.

We can also achieve this in TFT by adding special films - it does decrease the overall brightness of the display but enables it to be run in direct sunlight.

We all use and handle TFTs in our daily lives with phones, monitors, laptops etc. All of these use TFT displays, but they are very different to TFTs we may use in industrial applications. Why is this?

Consumer electronics have a different specification requirement to those of us in the industrial world. From the outside, they may well look the same with the same TFT cell and white LED backlights, but the differences then start to show. Laptop screens for example are designed to be as thin and lightweight as possible – often just 3mm thick and very susceptible to physical damage, not something you would want in an industrial application.

Consumer TFTs are also designed for typically one product, and when the next one is launched their specification will change to meet the requirements of that next generation, often meaning things like mounting holes and connector positions have changed in the space of a few months.

Interfaces to consumer displays also tend to use protocols designed for highly integrated systems like mobile phones and the ability to drive them requires you to use the latest mobile platform’s chipset.

Industrial displays have been designed and developed to overcome all of these issues. They use fixed rigid mounting holes, the interfaces are industry standard and most importantly they have a guaranteed lifetime of at least 5 years, so you can guarantee you will not have to redesign your own product due to TFT changes.

Intelligent Display Solutions (IDS) has recently introduced a whole family of industrial TFTs into RS Components, all incorporating the latest technology and all available for 5 years minimum.

All of this, with the latest high resolutions and bright backlights, means these displays are the best you can currently buy as an industrial product.

Intelligent Display Solutions (IDS) is a division of Intelligent Group Solutions Ltd. (IGS), a well-established respected industry-leading Optoelectronics solutions provider since 2001.

A new form of display technology called Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) is sweeping the display world today. Let’s take a look at what TFT display VS OLED display and how it stacks up to TFTs.

OLED display uses a light-emitting diode (LED) that features an organic compound as its emissive electroluminescent layer. Electric current is applied to the diode, activating the organic compound film and giving off light as a result. The organic compound film is typically situated between two electrodes, one of which is transparent.

OLEDs are mostly used in smartphones and limited releases of high-end smart televisions. It can also be used in computer monitors and handheld game consoles.

OLED displays naturally emit light, so using them on a display panel doesn’t require a backlight. Meanwhile, LCDs need backlights because the liquid crystals cannot create light on their own. OLED’s natural light emission also paves the way for creating lighter screen devices than those using TFT LCD display.

LCD displays are brighter than OLED. This is due to the LCD’s use of backlights that can brightly light up the entire screen. While OLEDs emit good brightness levels from their light, they can never match the brightness that LCD backlights have.

OLED wins in the black levels feature. It’s because OLEDs can perfectly turn off a pixel, causing it to become completely black. LCDs can’t create perfect black screens even with their full-array local dimming feature. LCDs are also prone to blooming, where a bright part spoils the darkness of an adjacent black area.

OLED screens have better viewing angles than LCDs display. Some LCDs improve their viewing angles by using in-plane switching panels (IPS). However, the clarity of images and videos can’t match that of OLEDs when viewed from extreme side angles. This is because LCDs inherently block light due to their filtering layers, and that creates added depth which makes LCD viewing angles limited.

LCD displays are a bit more energy-efficient than OLEDs. Energy consumption in OLED displays depends on the screen brightness. Less brightness used means lower power consumption, but this may not be ideal because the contrast ratio will suffer when brightness is reduced. This is not ideal if, for instance, you’re using an OLED smartphone under bright sunlight.

Meanwhile, the backlights form the bulk of power consumption in TFT displays. Putting the backlight to a lower setting significantly improves the energy efficiency of TFT displays. For instance, reducing the backlight brightness of an LCD TV with a LED backlight won’t affect the picture quality but will draw less power consumption than an OLED TV.

Both OLED and LCD create high-quality images with a wide color gamut on a screen. OLED display wins over TFT display regarding blackness levels and viewing angle. However, the TFT display takes the cake for brightness and energy efficiency.

AMOLED is another emerging display technology lately. It stands for Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diodes. AMOLED is a type of OLED display used in several smartphones, digital cameras, televisions, and media players.

Thin film transistors (TFTs) and capacitors are attached to each pixel LED component of the panel. At least two TFTs are attached to one pixel – one to control the capacitor’s charging and another to give a voltage source.

AMOLED displays have better color accuracy than LCDs. What makes the color more accurate in AMOLED displays is largely due to the precise pixel control achieved by AMOLED panels.

Whites and blacks appear perfect in AMOLED displays. Whites produced by LCDs may carry a bluish tint due to the backlight. Blacks don’t completely appear dark in LCDs, too.

AMOLED provides a greater color gamut than LCDs. AMOLEDs (and all OLED displays in general) have additional blue and green saturation. While these hues greatly widen AMOLED’s color options, some people find the resulting colors a bit unnatural to look at.

Meanwhile, LCDs have subdued greens and quite compelling red hues. Its color gamutmay not be as wide as AMOLED’s, but many people still find it satisfying. That’s because LCD’s color range closely matches the Standard RBG color gamut profile, the one most utilized in videos and images.

LCD’s backlights help maintain the color balance of the entire screen. The backlights ensure that color balance remains consistent across the display. Meanwhile, AMOLED tends to suffer from very slight color balance drifts because of variances in the diodes’ light-emitting capacity over time.

LCDs often have a lower contrast ratio and are prone to light bleeds. That’s due to the backlights remaining open even if light has been blocked and the pixels are supposed to show black color. This is not a problem with AMOLED displays because the panel can simply switch off the pixel to create a pure black color. AMOLEDs have a better contrast ratio as exhibited by their pure black and white levels.

Since AMOLED displays do not require filtering layers and backlights, they’re more suited for use in handheld mobile devices such as smartphones and gaming consoles. LCD may be used in mobile devices as well, but the filtering layers and backlights tend to add a slight bulk to the device. Hence, many manufacturers are now switching to thinner and lighter AMOLED displays.

To sum up this part, AMOLED displays fare better than LCDs in terms of color gamut, accuracy, contrast, and mobile device suitability. However, LCDs have the potential for longer lifespans and carry a better color balance across the display device.

Display P3 is an Apple-developed color space heavily used in American films and digital movie projection. It allows devices to display richer, vibrant, and more lifelike colors that are demanded in videos and movies. It’s also created for adapting to computer displays.

Display P3 has a color space based on the DCI-P3 primaries. It uses the D65 white point which is typically used in color spaces for computer displays. Display P3 also utilizes the sRGB transfer curve in place of the DCI-P3’s 1/2.6 pure gamma curve.

If you compare color LCD vs Display P3, you’ll find a significantly wider color range in Display P3 than the typical sRGB used in color LCDs. LCD monitors, especially those used in computers and laptops, are configured to accurately represent the sRGB gamut as precisely as possible. Meanwhile, Display P3 has been consistently used in Apple products since 2015, starting with the iMac desktop.

Display P3 is not limited to Apple devices, though. Several devices have been configured to support Display P3 as well. These include smartphones from Samsung, OnePlus, Google, and HTC. Even Windows-based laptops from Acer and Asus support Display P3 color gamut.

That’s all the basic information you need to know about LCD display screens. And the difference between TFT Display VS OLED Display. Now, you know How LCD Works, its possible lifespan, components, and how it compares to other display technologies.

Armed with this information, you can better appreciate and take care of your LCD display devices. And in case you’re planning to add display devices to your business, the information you’ve learned will help you make educated choices regarding the display technologies you’ll utilize.

TFT LCD is a mature technology. OLED is a relatively new display technology, being used in more and more applications. As for Micro LED, it is a new generation technology with very promising future. Followings are the pros and cons of each display technology.

TFT Liquid Crystal Display is widely used these days. Since LCD itself doesn"t emit light. TFT LCD relies on white LED backlight to show content. This is an explanation of how TFT LCD works.

Relatively lower contrast：Light needs to pass through LCD glasses, liquid crystal layer, polarizers and color filters. Over 90% is lost. Also, LCD can not display pure black.

Organic Light-Emitting Diode is built from an electro-luminescent layer that contains organic compounds, which emit light in response to an electric current. There are two types of OLED, Passive Matrix OLED (PMOLED) and Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED). These driving methods are similar to LCD"s. PMOLED is controlled sequentially using a matrix addressing scheme, m + n control signals are required to address a m x n display. AMOLED uses a TFT backplane that can switch individual pixels on and off.

Low power consumption and flexible: OLED doesn"t rely on backlight and consumes less power. OLED is essentially created on plastic film. It is bendable and easy to process.

High contrast and vivid color: OLED emits light itself, can produce very bright image with beautiful color. And because OLED can be turned off, it can produce true black.

Stroboscopic effect: most OLED screen uses PWM dimming technology. Some people who are easy perceive stroboscopic frequency may have sore eyes and tears.

​Micro LED, sometimes called μLED is made up of tiny LED, measure less than 100μm. Another way of looking at this is that MicroLEDs are simply traditional LEDs shrunk down and placed into an array.

Replacing organic material with inorganic GaN material eliminates the need of polarizing and encapsulation layer, found in OLED. Micro LED is smaller and thinner, consumes less power.

In market, LCD means passive matrix LCDs which increase TN (Twisted Nematic), STN (Super Twisted Nematic), or FSTN (Film Compensated STN) LCD Displays. It is a kind of earliest and lowest cost display technology.

LCD screens are still found in the market of low cost watches, calculators, clocks, utility meters etc. because of its advantages of low cost, fast response time (speed), wide temperature range,  low power consumption, sunlight readable with transflective or reflective polarizers etc.  Most of them are monochrome LCD display and belong to passive-matrix LCDs.

TFT LCDs have capacitors and transistors. These are the two elements that play a key part in ensuring that the TFT display monitor functions by using a very small amount of energy without running out of operation.

Normally, we say TFT LCD panels or TFT screens, we mean they are TN (Twisted Nematic) Type TFT displays or TN panels, or TN screen technology. TFT is active-matrix LCDs, it is a kind of LCD technologies.

TFT has wider viewing angles, better contrast ratio than TN displays. TFT display technologies have been widely used for computer monitors, laptops, medical monitors, industrial monitors, ATM, point of sales etc.

Actually, IPS technology is a kind of TFT display with thin film transistors for individual pixels. But IPS displays have superior high contrast, wide viewing angle, color reproduction, image quality etc. IPS screens have been found in high-end applications, like Apple iPhones, iPads, Samsung mobile phones, more expensive LCD monitors etc.

Both TFT LCD displays and IPS LCD displays are active matrix displays, neither of them can produce color, there is a layer of RGB (red, green, blue) color filter in each LCD pixels to make LCD showing colors. If you use a magnifier to see your monitor, you will see RGB color. With switch on/off and different level of brightness RGB, we can get many colors.

Neither of them can’t release color themselves, they have relied on extra light source in order to display. LED backlights are usually be together with them in the display modules as the light sources. Besides, both TFT screens and IPS screens are transmissive, it will need more power or more expensive than passive matrix LCD screens to be seen under sunlight.  IPS screens transmittance is lower than TFT screens, more power is needed for IPS LCD display.

Because of the huge demand for iPhone X series mobile phone screens in the aftermarket, as well as the reduction of raw materials and supplies, the phenomenon of using TFT in-cell screens to pretend to be Hard OLED in-cell screens have appeared in the aftermarket. Therefore, it is necessary to learn to distinguish between these two screens.

Overall thickness: the thickness of the TFT In-Cell screen is 2.26mm, while the OLED In-Cell screen is 1.71mm. Obviously, the overall thickness of the OLED In-Cell screen is much thinner than the TFT In-Cell screen.

OLED In-Cell screen has no backlight layer while TFT In-Cell screen has a backlight layer. This is why the overall thickness of the TFT In-Cell screen and the thickness of the three corners are thicker than those of the OLED In-Cell screen.

After the 360° Visibility Test, we can see that the display on the OLED In-Cell screen edge is much clearer. So, compare to the TFT In-Cell screen, the OLED In-Cell screen has higher visibility.

After the comparison, we found that the water drops don’t spread into larger spots on the OLED In-Cell screen and the water drops spread into larger spots on the TFT In-Cell screen. So, the oleophobic coating effect is better on the OLED In-Cell screen.

The pixel arrangement of TFT is RGB arrangement, while OLED is RGB Pentile arrangement, Due to this, the pixel arrangement of OLED In-Cell screen will be neater and more orderly than TFT In-Cell screen, and the pixel points will be clearer and more diverse. This is the reason for the higher display degree and higher color saturation of the OLED In-Cell screen.

The difference between OLED In-Cell screen and TFT In-Cell screen is mainly whether there is a backlight layer that determined the screen’s thickness, and then the pixel arrangement which determined color display and visibility.

It"s an organic light-emitting display. OLED display technology is different from the traditional LCD display mode, without backlight. It uses a very thin coating of organic materials and a glass substrate, which emit light when an electric current passes through. Moreover, OLED screen module can be made lighter and thinner, with larger viewing angle, and can significantly save power.

AMOLED is panel-self luminous. The TFT is illuminated on the LCD panel by backlight. AMOLED effect is more colorful and brighter. The screen can be seen clearly outside during the day. The most important is that the power consumption of AMOLED is much lower. AMOLED screen is more expensive than TFT LCD touch screen. The life of AMOLED screens is also longer.

AMOLED, after all, is a new technology, which has a bright future. TFT LCD touch screen can be thinned, and LTPS technology is still relatively stable. AMOLED module has low qualified rate and long lead time. So if the size and resolution are the same, buy the cheapest one.

Kingtech LCD is one of the leading TFT LCD OEM / ODM LCD display manufacturers in China. Customizing industrial equipment, medical, POS, logistics equipment, smart home applications and other projects is allowed.

Engineers should choose TFT vs OLED for new designs…and here’s why. OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology continues to increase in popularity, but its growth has really exploded in the last few months due to such large-scale mass production of consumer products such as: e-cigarettes (personal vaporizers), smart-watches, cell phones and other wearables.

But these advantages have worked against OLEDs in new products as more and more new designs have incorporated OLEDs, increasing demand, while the supply side of this technology has failed to keep pace.

“There are only a handful of factories here in Shenzhen that produce OLED screens,” says Alex Liu, President of EC Supply Inc., a leading distributor of vape and electronic cigarette products. “These factories are extremely understaffed for the tens of millions of OLED screens that are in demand, yet everyone wants to jump on board the wearable technology craze. These factories simply lack the work force and raw materials to keep up with production of wearables, let alone fulfill relatively small orders for the vape industry in time for the holiday season.”

Adding to the OLED supply nightmare is the labor shortage in China coupled with many OEM customers increasing their order quantities in a race to beat the Chinese New year shut down.

“I strongly recommend customers purchase any MODs with OLED screens through a trusted source that can guarantee inventory.” – Alex Liu, President of EC Supply Inc.

TFT technology has been in production for several years and is here to stay. There are several TFT glass suppliers to support current demand and they have a great deal of capacity for increased demand.

Focus Displays carries TFT Displays as a standard stock item and can be shipped the same day from our online store as well as from distributor: Allied Electronics

TFT displays are also known as an “Active Matrix TFT LCD module” and have an array of thin film transistors fabricated on the glass that makes the LCD. There is one of these transistors for each pixel on the LCD. See our blog post RGB and Color Depth for more on how TFTs show color.

LCDs use voltage applied to a field of microscopic liquid crystals to change the crystal’s orientation. The orientation of the crystals changes the polarization of the liquid crystal creating light or dark pixels on the display.

These pixels are arranged to create characters or graphic images. This type of display may be sunlight-readable and may have a backlight, which allows it to be viewed in dark areas.

Beautiful, complex images: All of our TFT modules are full-color graphic displays. Unlike standard monochrome character displays, you can create complex images for an imaginative user experience.

Thin and light: These are ideal display modules for handheld devices, communications equipment, information displays, and test and measurement equipment.

Single Supply: Most of the TFTs use an integrated controller with built-in voltage generation so only a single 3.3v supply is needed for both the panel power and logic voltage.

Many of the LCD controllers on board our graphic LCD display modules also include a CGROM (character generator ROM) which allows for easy character information as well as full bit-mapped graphic information to be shown.

Some of the graphic LCD displays have the ability to render graphics in grayscale, enabling you to show images and elements of your UI (user interface) with more depth and definition.

Because OLEDs are emissive, these displays can always be used in dark environments. There is usually a software command or hardware setting that will allow OLEDs to be dimmed.

Some OLED displays are bright enough to be sunlight readable–these models will typically take more current and may have a shorter rated lifetime. Additionally, OLEDs have extremely wide viewing angles.

What makes OLEDs useful for display construction is that they can be fabricated in bulk. Using OLED fabrication techniques, all the diodes can be made at the same time, at a much lower cost. OLEDs also come in a wide variety of colors.

AMOLED and TFT are two types of display technology used in smartphones. AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) displays are made up of tiny organic light-emitting diodes, while TFT (Thin-Film Transistor) displays use inorganic thin-film transistors.

AMOLEDs are made from organic materials that emit light when an electric current is passed through them, while TFTs use a matrix of tiny transistors to control the flow of electricity to the display.

Refresh Rate: Another key difference between AMOLED and TFT displays is the refresh rate. The refresh rate is how often the image on the screen is updated. AMOLED screens have a higher refresh rate than TFT screens, which means that they can display images more quickly and smoothly.

Response Time: The response time is how long it takes for the pixels to change from one colour to another. AMOLED screens have a shorter response time than TFT screens..

Colour Accuracy/Display Quality: AMOLED screens are more accurate when it comes to displaying colours. This is because each pixel on an AMOLED screen emits its own light, which means that the colours are more pure and true to life. TFT screens, on the other hand, use a backlight to illuminate the pixels, which can cause the colours to appear washed out or less vibrant.

Viewing Angle: The viewing angle is the angle at which you can see the screen. AMOLED screens have a wider viewing angle than TFT screens, which means that you can see the screen from more angles without the colours looking distorted.

Power Consumption: One of the main advantages of AMOLED displays is that they consume less power than TFT displays. This is because the pixels on an AMOLED screen only light up when they need to, while the pixels on a TFT screen are always illuminated by the backlight.

Production Cost: AMOLED screens are more expensive to produce than TFT screens. This is because the manufacturing process for AMOLED screens is more complex, and the materials used are more expensive.

Availability: TFT screens are more widely available than AMOLED screens and have been around for longer. They are typically used in a variety of devices, ranging from phones to TVs.

Usage: AMOLED screens are typically used in devices where power consumption is a concern, such as phones and wearable devices. TFT screens are more commonly used in devices where image quality is a higher priority, such as TVs and monitors.

AMOLED and TFT are two different types of display technology. AMOLED displays are typically brighter and more vibrant, but they are more expensive to produce. TFT displays are cheaper to produce, but they are not as bright or power efficient as AMOLED displays.

The display technology that is best for you will depend on your needs and preferences. If you need a screen that is bright and vibrant, then an AMOLED display is a good choice. If you need a screen that is cheaper to produce, then a TFT display is a good choice. However, if you’re worried about image retention, then TFT may be a better option.

Nauticomp Inc.provides world-class fully customizable touchscreen displays for commercial and industrial settings. With features like sunlight readability, brightness adjustability, infrared lighting, full backlighting, all-weather capabilities, etc., our displays are second to none. Contact us today to learn more.

OLED relies on its own light to display images, does not need to use backlight, and is not affected by the surrounding light. Its general life is about 5000 times. TFT is an active matrix liquid crystal, and needs to use the brightness of backlight to display images, which is affected by the surrounding light, and its general life is about 20000 times.

OLED display is essentially different from traditional LCD display, that is, it does not need backlight. It uses very thin organic material coating and glass substrate. When there is current, these organic materials will emit light. Therefore, OLED LCD screen can be made lighter and thinner, with a larger viewing angle and more power saving at the same time. However, it has a short service life and can"t make the screen bigger. OLED is mostly used for folding mobile phone screen.

TFT thin film transistor (TFT) is the current material LCD screen. It belongs to the active matrix type LCD screen. There is a special lamp on the back, which can "actively" control each independent pixel on the screen. This is what we often call active matrix TFT. The reaction time is relatively fast, about 80 ms, and the visual angle is large, usually about 130 degrees, It is used in some high-end models. Because the arrangement of TFT LCD has memory, it will not recover immediately after the current disappears, which effectively improves the ability of playing dynamic pictures. The disadvantages are power consumption and high manufacturing cost.

OLED color screen is 30% more expensive than TFT color screen of the same size! The big difference between true color OLED screen and TFT screen is that OLED true color screen has high screen contrast and fuller color restoration, and OLED true color screen is better than TFT screen in backlight and brightness.

OLED displays are commonplace on all high-end phones, tablets, smartwatches, televisions, and even many of the many budget phones. However, there isn"t one type of OLED technology. Depending on your device, you may have an OLED, AMOLED, or POLED display.

OLED promises inky blacks, high contrast, low response times, and incredible brightness. There are a few downsides (primarily the burn-in phenomenon), but overall it"s the best screen technology you"ll find. We explain the background behind the acronyms, the difference between POLED and AMOLED, and which is better, helping you choose the right phone.

Before we get into the differences between the types of OLED screens, let"s look at the similarities. Regardless of your OLED device, whether a laptop or a smartphone, there are some standard fundamentals.

Every OLED screen comprises millions of diodes, hence the name organic light-emitting diode. Viewed under a microscope, each screen consists of a series of red, green, and blue diodes that can be individually turned on and off. Behind this, the light-emitting pixels of an OLED display emit blue and yellow light. The yellow and blue light combine to form white light, passing through the red, green, and blue subpixels to produce a single pixel. Because each pixel handles its light and color, OLED displays do not need a separate backlight.

As an OLED screen doesn"t need a backlight, black is produced by turning off the pixels, resulting in deep, consistent blacks. This allows manufacturers to implement things like an always-on display without quickly burning through battery life.

Another critical advantage of OLED tech is high contrast ratios. Technically, OLED displays offer "infinite contrast," or 1,000,000:1 contrast ratios. This is because OLED displays reproduce black by turning off pixels entirely, and contrast is measured by comparing the brightest part of the screen to the darkest part. Improved contrast makes on-screen content more vivid and makes bright highlights look more impressive. This also means that OLED screens can reach higher brightness than the best IPS LCD screens.

OLED displays can display more colors with greater color accuracy than their LCD peers. This is great for photographers and videographers using their phones to preview, edit, and create content.

OLED displays have near-instantaneous pixel response times. Older LCD screens often have lower response times because to change from one color to another, they must physically change the orientation of a liquid crystal, which takes time. An OLED display turns a subpixel on or off with an electrical charge, giving them a faster pixel response time.

The omission of a separate backlight and the use of fewer components means OLED displays can be thinner than LCDs, making them more versatile in their applications. This means they are more fragile and prone to damage in high-impact or high-stress situations. Engineers combat this by using technologies like Gorilla Glass and robust metal frames. Mitigation strategies like these raise the cost of OLED screens.

OLED displays can also be transparent, depending on the materials used. Transparent displays are helpful for in-display fingerprint readers and under-display cameras, which allow manufacturers to design smartphones with fewer and smaller bezels, notches, and display cutouts. When notches and cutouts are necessary, OLED displays have more even brightness around those cutouts and notches compared with LCDs, where the backlight has to make it around the cutout, and things get a little messy.

Of particular import to smartphones, OLED displays often consume less power, especially when displaying dark images or UI elements, thanks to the pixel-level regulation of brightness. However, at max brightness, an OLED screen usually uses more power than an equivalent LCD.

As with any new technology, OLED tech is not without its flaws.OLED displays are prone to degradation from age and UV exposure, resulting from the organic nature of the molecules that make up the diodes. The organic nature of OLED displays also leads to a phenomenon called screen burn-in, where static UI elements like menus, navigation bars, and status bars (elements that are on-screen for long periods) leave a permanent ghost image, even when they are not displayed. However, burn-in has been somewhat mitigated by pixel shifting and technological advancements in recent years.

Early OLED screens placed all the organic materials on a glass substrate. However, glass is rigid, so a flexible plastic substrate is needed to create foldable display screens, leading to the creation of POLED screens.

POLED (polymer organic light-emitting diode) offers advantages in terms of durability and versatility. The replacement ofglass substrates with plastic ones makes them more shock-resistant. Another unique advantage is in the implementation. Designers can reduce bezel size by folding the electronics underneath an edge of the display instead of having it be on the same plane. POLED displays are also significantly thinner than OLED displays with glass substrates.

Note the difference between P OLED and pOLED. pOLED is the trademark that LG Display uses to brand its plastic OLED displays. It produces these displays for a variety of applications and companies. Google used pOLED displays on the Pixel 2 XL, LG used them on theLG Velvet and several wearables,and Apple reportedly used LG pOLED displays on some Apple Watch models. LG"s pOLED displays seem to suffer from an increased risk of burn-in, as users of the Google Pixel 2 XL complained of burn-in after a few months of use.

To get to the resolution and size of a phone, an AMOLED screen (active matrix organic light emitting diode) is needed. Older, passive matrix OLED displays (PMOLED) require higher voltages for higher pixels/resolutions. The higher the voltage, the lower the screen"s lifetime.

Thin-film transistor (TFT) arrays used in modern active-matrix OLED displays control the charging of the display"s storage capacitors. These TFTs control current flow, resulting in more energy-efficient OLED panels than PMOLED displays. This allows a larger display size without compromising resolution, lifetime, or power consumption.

QLED isn"t related to OLED displays—despite what the name may suggest—but it"s often slated as a competitor to OLED, and it aims to replace the technology by targeting both OLED"s successes and failures. QLED stands for quantum dot light-emitting diode. The core principle of QLED technology is the same as a regular OLED. A backlight is passed through red, green, and blue subpixel layers to generate an image. However, the backlight isn"t one large, uniformly-lit layer. Instead, QLED displays use an array of tiny individually-controlled LEDs to supply the backlight. Using individually-controlled LEDs means the display can produce a more accurate image with a higher contrast.

Generally speaking, QLED displays have similar benefits to OLED displays—high peak brightness, high contrast, perfect blacks, and good saturation. Still, they lack some OLED advantages, like image retention and reduced overall and sustained brightness.

QLED is found in TVs and large computer monitors because that"s where it sees the most benefit. OLED displays in phones are small enough, bright enough, and cheap enough that QLED wouldn"t be able to compete or offer any practical benefit to the end user.

Display type is only one part of the puzzle.What use is exotic technology if it doesn"t make any difference to the end user? Smartphone manufacturers use many approaches to improve their displays. Let"s look at a few things you should look for apart from the display type.

Resolution is the number of pixels a screen has. It is usually written as a ratio: pixels on the long side by pixels on the short side, for example, 1920 x 1080. Most smartphone displays have a resolution between 720p (1280 x 720) on the low-end and 4k (3480 x 2160) on some Sony models. While 4k is excessive and rare for anything under 15 inches, 720p, 1080p, and 1440p are all common smartphone resolutions.

The ideal smartphone screen resolution depends on the screen size. A metric called pixels per inch (PPI) describes the display"s number of pixels in a vertical or horizontal inch. For a 6-inch display, you should aim for at least 1080p or above 350 PPI. This will ensure that the text is crisp.

A subpixel is one of the light-emitting parts of a pixel—in the case of most displays, these are red, blue, and green—that combine in different quantities to display various colors in an image. Although RGB subpixel layouts have been the prevalent option for a long time, some display manufacturers elect to use subpixel arrangements like BGR, PenTile, RGBG, and WRGB. The reason these subpixel layouts exist is to combat the various shortcomings of the display technology.

As with resolution, the subpixel layout can affect perceived image quality. Over the brief course of display history, manufacturers and designers have settled on RGB as a standard, meaning content is generally optimized for that layout. When manufacturers decided to invent new subpixel layouts, the perceived quality took a bit of a hit.

So why do manufacturers use odd-pixel layouts? It depends on the manufacturer and its goals. Samsung uses PenTile displays, which use RGBG instead of RGB subpixels, to combat image retention on its AMOLED displays. WRGB displays add a separate white subpixel to boost brightness on OLED displays—a technology that is otherwise notoriously dim.

Refresh rate is the number of times per second a display refreshes, and higher refresh rates mean motion and animations look smoother. Generally, 60Hz is the lowest commonly-found refresh rate and is perfectly serviceable. Many modern flagship phones and a few mid-range phonesoffer 90Hz, 120Hz, 144Hz, and even 240Hz displays.

Response times on OLED displays are generally lower, meaning displays can reach these high refresh rates and look better at these higher refresh rates thanks to the reduced ghosting.

Smartphones are often used outside in bright sunlight, so display brightness is a huge factor. Display brightness is measured in nits or cd/m². Peak brightness is the momentary maximum brightness of a small portion of a screen, while sustained brightness is a more realistic representation of the brightness of the whole display. Aim for above 600 nits of sustained brightness since anything below may cause legibility issues in bright conditions. On the other hand, brightness is measured logarithmically, not linearly, meaning 1,200 nits is only twice as bright as 300 nits. This is important since many manufacturers lean heavily on high brightness metrics as a marketing point.

Display specifications are no different. While it is true that OLED displays may be the best option for some people, they command a premium, and a lot of people wouldn"t notice the difference.

Brightness, refresh rate, and resolution are all key factors, and performance as a whole should be the determining factor in selecting a display, not the shiny new technology involved. If you"re looking for a phone with an OLED display and a high refresh rate, check out the best Android phones you can buy.

Welcome to Riverdi University. In this lecture we will be talking about OLED displays. OLED displays are a little bit different than the TFT displays that we normally sell and Riverdi does not sell standard OLED displays. We sell them as custom modules only for particular projects. So, if you require an OLED display in your application, please contact us and for sure we will be able to find a solution for you and make the right display. Anyway, because we share the knowledge about displays, we have today’s University lesson about OLEDs because it is important to understand how they work and how to use them and just acknowledge this fantastic technology that exists and for sure in the future we will have standard displays based on OLED technology as well.

In the picture above we have a short agenda of the lecture. We will talk about basic rules, how OLED displays are built and how they differ from TFT modules. Then a little bit about physics and about application rules, how to use OLED displays. We will also talk about passive OLEDs, we will see the comparison between OLED technology and STN, which is a monochrome LCD, and a VFD which is the Vacuum Display. Vacuum Display is an old technology, but we can find some displays on the market that still use this this technology. We will talk about Active OLEDs that are AMOLEDs and Super AMOLEDs and last, we will talk about interfaces for OLED displays.

and just acknowledge this fantastic technology that exists and for sure in the future we will have standard displays based on OLED technology as well.

OLED is abbreviation from Organic Light Emitting Diode. It is like LED but based on organic materials. The emitting light is pretty much the same as with the LED, just the materials used here are different. They are not silicone based but organic based layers. As you can see the structure and construction is pretty simple, the physics here is like in any LED diode or laser diode. We have the recombination of electrons, so with the current they go to the higher levels energy states and then they go to the lower levels and emit light. Using various materials, we can generate distinct colors, and this is different than in TFT.

As you may remember from our TFT sessions, we said that TFT or LCD in general is just blocking the light from the backlight. Usually, the backlight in TFT is white. We block the light, or we transmit the light and to achieve the color in TFT we need to use color filters. Normally there are three color filters on the top of the TFT screen, which are RGB. For OLED screens it is different. We have a material that emits the color itself. So, using varied materials, we can emit distinct colors. If we have a full color OLED display which will typically be an AMOLED display, that you can see nowadays in mobile phones or tablets or even laptops or TV sets, it uses RGB cells or RGBW cells and then the colors are mixed. Remember that the OLED is emitting light itself, and we do not have any backlight.

In the picture above, you can see a simple comparison between a TFT display and an OLED display. The first thing that is always noticeable is that OLED display is much simpler. We have less layers than in a TFT. As you may remember from the TFT lecture it is pretty complicated. At first, we need a backlight, then we need some diffusers, light guides to prepare the light, we have polarizers, we have a TFT itself, which is simplified in the picture, and then we have color filters and the top polarizer. With OLED the construction is very simple. We need a base as the backbone for every display, then we have the emission layer and some conductive layers on the top and the bottom.

A passive display – PMOLED is very simple compared to an LCD monochrome display. An Active Matrix – AMOLED is more like a TFT and we additionally have transistors in the cells. But in the simplified version we do not have transistors, just simple layers and there is no color filters and no backlight. So, we have no back and no front layers, just the middle that is emitting light itself, and this gives us a really big advantage. Of course, it is simpler, it may be cheaper to build in mass production OLED displays, but if we do not have a backlight, that means if we do not emit any light, we have a true black background and this is a huge advantage of OLED displays, where we have a contrast in very high values. OLED displays are perfect displays to achieve high contrast. If we do not have reflected light or if we decrease the reflected light, we do not have the light that is coming from the backlight, because there is no backlight. If you have ever seen an OLED display, especially in a TV store, you could see OLED TV sets, from LG or Samsung or other brands, and you may notice that the contrast there is very high and the black is true black. It is even an unnatural thing to see that. The companies there use special demo movies where we have like the cosmos or something and the sun in the middle of the screen. You can see that the background is black, and it is true black. It is different than in TFT displays. If you have a TFT display next to the OLED display, you will notice the difference. The contrast in OLED is much higher because there is no backlight and no issue with the light that is going through TFT always, a little but always, that is the main difference.

In the picture above, we have the main advantages of OLED displays. We have excellent contrast, very high contrast. As you can see the background is really black and it looks like that in reality, not only in the photo. No backlight, high brightness, we can achieve pretty high brightness of the pixels in OLED, we have fantastic color reproduction, because we do not use color filters, we are able to generate very saturated colors in a wide gamut. Typically, OLEDs have the widest gamut color on the market, and it is really superior to a typical TFT

We can also achieve this with a TFT, with special color filters or Quantum Dot filters, but in general OLED is superior here without any special effort. The true black is related to the contrast. Super viewing angles, that is another advantage over the TFT. If we have a typical TFT, a TN display discussed in the previous lectures, we have grayscale inversion from one viewing angle. Then we have displays like IPS or MVA types, where we can see a picture from all the viewing angles but still the viewing angle would be like 85 degrees 87 or the best would be up to 89 degrees. In OLED displays we have 89 degrees without any effort because it is like a LED diode. It emits light, and we can see exactly the same from all the viewing angles. OLEDs can be very thin, because there are only a few layers, no backlight, no front layers, so they can be very thin and very light. We can build OLED displays on elastic surfaces that we can bend or can be curved, for example Samsung foldable mobile phones or some curved LG TV sets. OLEDs have low power consumption. If we have an LCD or a TFT, we need a backlight. The backlight is consuming a lot of power because the light is being consumed by all the layers that the TFT has: the polarizers, the color filters, diffuser; everywhere we lose a little bit of power from the backlight, so we need a lot of power to really have bright TFT. With OLED we have just a straight light from the pixels itself, so the power consumption can be low and lower than in a typical LCD. And we have a very wide operating temperature. We can go as low as -40 with OLED. There are no mechanical issues like with the LCD where we have liquid crystal inside the cell that in low temperature can become close to solid and cannot move anymore. Typically for TFT we have –20, -30 degrees, in some exceptional cases we have –40, but for OLED it is no problem to work even in -40 degrees. On the other hand, with high temperatures, you need to be careful because it decreases OLED lifetime, so you need to check in a spec or contact manufacturers if you require high temperatures for OLED. If it is for short periods, then it is fine, but if your OLED display need to work constantly in a high temperature, like 50, 60 or 80 degrees, then it is worth to check how it will affect the lifetime of OLED display.

Now let us look at some disadvantages. In industry OLED technology is not very widely used apart from consumer products. In mobile phones, tablets, laptops we already have a lot of use cases. In industrial applications it is still a growing market, but not very mature. Some of the problems are related to the patents, that is why we are still waiting for the mass adaptation of OLED displays. We may have a higher power consumption, especially if we have a full white background then we need to power all the pixels and the power consumption can sometimes be higher than the TFT. So, there are only a few disadvantages, and they are minor in our case.

In the picture above there is a chart from our partner Winstar company from Taiwan. As you can see, they measured how long the OLED display can work. In the past, around 10 years ago, there were problems with OLED displays. The first OLED displays on the market had a very short working lifetime. It was like 10k hours, 10 000 hours and the problem was, that the brightness of them decreased even when they were not used, were just on the shelf. The first OLEDs had a lot of issues but later the process was improved, particularly by Winstar, they did a lot of work to really extend the lifetime of OLED displays.

Here we have some calculations and report where Winstar used the higher temperature to speed up the process and the result from the calculation is around 100 000 hours, so 100k hours which is very long. For industrial TFT displays we typically have 50 000 hours of lifetime. The lifetime is calculated until the display has a half of the initial brightness. When you say the display is 50 000 hours lifetime it does not mean it will be dead after 50 000 hours, it means that the average brightness will be in a 50%. For OLEDs it will happen after the 100 000 hours which is a very long time, it is like 15 years of continuous 24-hour work. If we sometimes switch off our OLED display, which is the normal use case in most industrial applications, we can expect the display to work even over 15 years. So, the lifetime nowadays with a good manufacturer like Winstar is not a case anymore.

Now let us talk about proper applications of OLED displays. With the TFT we have a backlight. If the backlight decreases in brightness, the whole display decreases in brightness. With OLEDs we have like every pixel is a backlight, it is emitting light. If we have a lot of pixels next to each other, and we use them, the brightness decreases in according to used time. So, if we have a pixel that is switched on longer than the next pixel, the first pixel will have a little bit lower brightness after some time. In the picture above, you can see two pixels that are moved aside. We cannot see a big difference between them, because they are moved aside. The human eye cannot recognize the brightness very well. We cannot tell what the brightness level of a separate thing is, but we are very good at comparison, and when we move the pixels next to each other we can clearly see the difference between them. This is the case of OLED display that if we have two pixels next to each other there may be some problems, that after some time some of them will have just a little bit lower brightness and we can see the difference.

In the picture above, we have a real example. If we have an OLED display and normally, we have a watch there that shows the time, we have the arrows moved around and we have the circle and most of the time we have this image, then after some months or years of usage we may have a situation where the circle brightness will decrease a little bit. Of course, this image is especially prepared to show it strongly, the arrows will have a little bit higher brightness, but still a little bit lower than the normal, the background which was not used so often. This is something that we may see on OLED displays after some time. The use case here would be switching the colors. We can switch the background to be like in a negative way, for one hour we have a watch like on the picture, and for another hour we turn the background on and then we switch off the watch itself, so we try to keep the pixels in ON state the same time. It is not very important in most of cases, you do not need to be worried about that, but if you have i.e., 24 hours information in some place of your display, you may want to move it from time to time and use the entire display all the time of using. Another way is to implement a controller that uses a grayscale. This is more complicated; we need to calculate the time of the pixels where they were switched on and increase the brightness in this area to keep the display brightness the same all the time.

In the picture above, we have a real example. If we have an OLED display and normally, we have a watch there that shows the time, we have the arrows moved around and we have the circle and most of the time we have this image, then after some months or years of usage we may have a situation where the circle brightness will decrease a little bit. Of course, this image is especially prepared to show it strongly, the arrows will have a little bit higher brightness, but still a little bit lower than the normal, the background which was not used so often.

This is something that we may see on OLED displays after some time. The use case here would be switching the colors. We can switch the background to be like in a negative way, for one hour we have a watch like on the picture, and for another hour we turn the background on and then we switch off the watch itself, so we try to keep the pixels in ON state the same time. It is not very important in most of cases, you do not need to be worried about that, but if you have i.e., 24 hours information in some place of your display, you may want to move it from time to time and use the entire display all the time of using. Another way is to implement a controller that uses a grayscale. This is more complicated; we need to calculate the time of the pixels where they were switched on and increase the brightness in this area to keep the display brightness the same all the time.

Let us see now the comparation between the passive OLED typical OLED, STN monochrome LCD display and VFD Vacuum Fluorescent Display which is an old technology. As you can see in the picture above the structure of OLED is very simple, just one layer, just base glass, and that is it. In the STN we have a lot of layers we need the backlight we need the polarizers we need more layers, so it is much more complicated. OLED is very simple, it can be very thin and below we have a photo of how it looks.

We can see the OLED, STN and VFD and we see them from different viewing angles. The OLED display is the winner, it has the best contrast and the best viewing angles, so it is a perfect display from the optical point of view. As you can see, on STN display from some angles we are not even able to see the image. It will be similar if we go to the TFT displays. That is why we need to use technologies like IPS to see the image from all viewing angles. For OLED we have it just like that, without any effort.

The next OLED type after PMOLED is AMOLED. AMOLED means Active Matrix OLED. Similarly, like going from STN monochrome displays to TFT displays, to the active LCD displays with the LCDs, we add transistors in every pixel. So, the substrate layer, the backbone of the AMOLED display is practically the same as in TFT. We have transistors that are switching the pixels on and off, but we do not have liquid crystals. Instead of liquid crystals we put organic light emitting layers on top and we switch the diodes on top of this on and off. So, the technology is similar to the TFTs and that is why investing in tooling and making a new display is so expensive, it is comparable to the to the TFT.

On the picture above there are some first devices that were on the market over 10 years ago or 15 years ago with the AMOLED displays and the example of modern elastic OLED. That is the future, and we hope to see in the future a completely foldable or rollable display.

like that because of the in-cell touch. Normally we have OLED layers which emit the light, but we do not have the touch, we need to add it. With the TFT it is done by the additional layer, but with Super AMOLED we can put the touch screen in the cells. We add additional connectors, we add the sensing electrodes, and we have the touch sensor in the display. This is more cost efficient. If we know that our OLED display will be always used with a touch screen, which is the case of mobile phones or tablets, then adding this decreases the cost, we just need to add the cover glass on top and laminate it.

Now we know a lot about the PMOLED, AMOLED and Super AMOLED. Let us talk about interfaces. We have a separate lecture about display interfaces that you can find here , now we just focus on OLED displays. For passive matrix OLED displays typically we have I2C, SPI or old parallel interfaces, because they are slow, they are general purpose interfaces and require a memory in the display itself. We just sent simple information about switching the pixel on and off and sometimes the grayscale. If we go to the AMOLED, we rather require a video from a display and we also require all the colors, etc., so we have a lot of information to be sent and the interfaces there are like MIPI, DSI or RGB for some industrial use cases. The most AMOLED color displays on the market will have MIPI, which is a standard for mobile phones and tablets or even laptops and then we need to send a new frame 50 or 100 times per second, the same with LVDS interface.

Reports suggest that Apple is getting closer to implementing MicroLED in its future product releases, including the Apple Watch, with the display technology potentially offering a number of benefits compared to other methods. AppleInsider explains how the current TFT and OLED display technologies work, and how MicroLED differs.

MicroLED shows promise as a display technology, potentially offering power savings and a reduced screen thickness when put beside current-generation display panels. Apple has recognized the potential, and has invested heavily into developing the technology over the last few years, with a view to using it in the company"s future products.

To understand fully how MicroLED can benefit Apple, it is worth understanding how the commonly-used display technologies work in the first place, before examining how different MicroLED really is in a comparison.

The most common display technology used by consumer products today, and the oldest of the technologies examined in this article, TFT"s full name of TFT LCD stands for Thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display. This technology is extensively used by Apple in its products, found in iPads, iPhones, MacBooks, and iMac lines.

The LCD part relates to the concept of defining small translucent or transparent areas in a thin and flexible liquid crystal-filled panel, like the displays used in calculators. Passing current through the segment changes the molecular properties of the defined segment area, allowing it to switch between being see-through or opaque.

TFT takes this a stage further, by effectively covering an entire panel with a grid of isolated liquid crystal segments, which again can vary between opaque and transparent based on the level of electrical current. In this case, there are far more segments needed to make up the display than with a normal calculator.

Polarizing filters on either side of the TFT display sandwich are used to prevent light from passing through directly, with the liquid crystal reaction of each segment affecting polarized light passing through the first filter to go through the second.

Sometimes these types of display are known as "LED," but this somewhat of a misnomer, as this actually refers to the use of Light Emitting Diodes as a light source. The LED backlight shines light through the various layers making up the TFT LCD.

Displays that use collections of LEDs as individual pixels do exist, but it isn"t usually found in consumer products. LED screens are commonly used for billboards, in attractions, and as a large-scale display for events.

TFT LCD screens continue to be widely used in production for a number of reasons. Manufacturers have spent a long time perfecting the production of the display panels to make it as cheap as possible, while its high usage allows it to benefit from economies of scale.

Used in consumer devices in a similar way to TFT LCD, OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) is a display technology that is similar in the basic concept, but differs considerably in its execution. Again, the idea is for a thin panel to be divided up into segments, with charge applied to each section to alter its molecular properties, but that"s where the techniques diverge.

As the name implies, OLED uses an organic compound film that is put between two electrodes, which are used to provide charge. Instead of the charge changing how light passes through, the current instead causes the emissive electroluminescent layer to emit light, without the need for a rear light source.

These self-emitting pixels gives OLED a considerable advantage over LCD-based systems in a number of areas. Most obviously, by not needing a backlight, OLED panels can be made far thinner than an equivalent LCD-based display, allowing for the production of thinner devices or more internal area for other components, like a larg