tft display vs oled in stock

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.

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.

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.

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

The viewfinder in the E-m10 mark II/III/IIIs/IV, Pen-F, and E-m5 mark III is an OLED viewfinder. The viewfinder in the E-m5 mark I/II, E-m1 mark I/II/II, E-m1x, Stylus-1, and the VF-2/VF-3/VF-4 viewfinders is a TFT LCD viewfinder. They have different characteristics:

In general an OLED viewfinder does not have issues if you look at the viewfinder while wearing polarized sunglasses and shooting in horizontal orientation. Most of the TFT LCD viewfinders have horizontal waves alternating between no distortion and heavy distortion (you can select the focus point if you concentrate on the areas where there is no distortion, but you would not be able to manually focus). However, the E-m5 mark II is different that when I"ve tried it, the viewfinder is completely opaque. Note, if you shoot in vertical orientation, there is not degradation.

In general, TFT viewfinders can refresh their images much faster that OLED displays can. I suspect this is the reason Olympus uses TFT viewfinders in the modern pro cameras.

Generally I find that the OLED viewfinder supersaturates the image compared to the TFT LCD viewfinder. This is great, many people like the supersaturation, but the picture that is recorded is not supersatured, and if you wanted the picture you saw in the viewfinder, you will need to bump up the levels somewhat in post processing.

In terms of computer monitors and TVs that use OLED displays compared to TFT LCD display, the OLED displays tend to fail sooner than the TFT displays. A particular failure mode is that often the OLED displays start losing color fidelity (particularly in the blue colors). However, I"m not sure it matters as much for a camera display. Most users probably don"t use their cameras enough for the monitor to fail. Those that do use their cameras day in and day typically replace their cameras every few years.

Also in terms of computer monitors and TVs that use OLED displays compared to TFT LCD displays, you can typically view an OLED screen at a wider angle than a TFT LCD screen. For a camera viewfinder, I suspect this is not an issue.

World wide, the cell phone market tends to consume most of the OLED displays. This leaves very few different displays that camera makers could use. TFT LCD display are older technology and there are likely different sources of the display.

I"m a migraine sufferer and I need to weark polarized sunglasses whenever I"m outdoors in daylight. So I now prefer cameras with OLED viewfinders over TFT LCD viewfinders.

I"ve run into other migraine sufferes that are sensitive to the refresh rate, but don"t need polarized glasses like I do. For them, the cameras with the TFT LCD finders are better because of the faster refresh rate.

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.

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.

Are colour OLED displays ready to offer a better alternative to TFT-LCDs, and where do today’s state-of-the-art TFT-LCDs remain strong?We all know that colour graphical display can seriously enhance the user experience your application will deliver. So let"s re-cap on the advantages both TFT and OLED technology offer.

TFT-LCDmaturity means competitive prices, good quality and reliability and available in a wide range of sizes - typically 1-21" for industrial embedded applications.

Operating principle: in similar ways to a monochrome STN, twisted liquid-crystal columns create waveguides to direct light from the display backlight through polarising filters. An electric field applied across ITO electrodes changes the crystal alignment to prevent the light passing and make specific locations appear dark. Unlike STN, however, the TFT-LCD contains red, green and blue filters; a thin-film transistor embedded in every sub-pixel modulates the light intensity to mix the desired colour. TFT-LCDs can display millions of colours, and response times can be fast enough to support full-frame-rate video or smooth animations.

Performance: Standard TFT-LCDs do have some limitations, however. Contrast can be limited, and colour-inversion can be perceived at extreme viewing angles. Typical contrast ratio is about 400:1 with viewing angles of L70/R70/T70/B60.

Improvements: IPS (In-Plane Switching), aka Super-TFT, displays arrived to overcome these drawbacks. In IPS, changes in crystal orientation happen in the same plane as the glass sheets that constitute the display. Pixels are dark in the off state instead of in the on state, which enables the display to appear true back when powered down. Contrast and colour fidelity are improved, and also more consistent, even at wider viewing angles than a standard TFT-LCD can manage. What’s more, there are no distracting bright-pixel defects, which can occur when a transistor fails in a conventional TFT-LCD.

Sleek, Efficient Design: A Organic LED (OLED) displays can be made lighter and thinner than conventional or Super TFT, partly because no backlight is required. No backlight means they also consume less power, which has been the key to their success in the premium smartphone sector and is also driving adoption in mobile industrial and medical applications - such as wearable medical monitors, tele-health equipment, cordless industrial panels, and mobile robotics.

Because equipment designers don’t have to be so parsimonious with power, the display can remain active for longer instead of having to be powered down as quickly as possible to conserve battery energy. Hence, they can be ready to use immediately without needing time for the display to wake up.

Bright and Beautiful: Their light weight and low profile allow OLED displays to be fixed to the surface of an enclosure, even if the surface is curved. This is easier and more economical than designing an aperture and making provision for mounting a TFT-LCD. The wider temperature range of OLEDs also makes them a robust choice for industrial applications or use outdoors.

Passive-Matrix OLED (PMOLED) displays can be monochrome or – with the inclusion of RGB sub-pixels -colour. On the other hand, PMOLEDs can suffer from limited frame rates at larger displays sizes, so Active-Matrix (AMOLED) technologyintroduces a thin-film transistor per pixel that allows each to remain turned on for as long as needed. An AMOLED display can be the best choice if a large, bright colour display is required.

Going the TFT-LCD route, especially given the flexibility to choose standard or IPS/Super-TFT, provides a wide choice of displays that are cost-effective, readily available in numerous sizes, and easily capable of displaying full-frame-rate video and smooth animations.

On the other hand, AMOLED displays can deliver superior optical performance and wider viewing angles, with lower power consumption, reduced weight, and the engineering and aesthetic advantages of the extremely thin and flexible substrate.

If you want to buy a new monitor, you might wonder what kind of display technologies I should choose. In today’s market, there are two main types of computer monitors: TFT LCD monitors & IPS monitors.

The word TFT means Thin Film Transistor. It is the technology that is used in LCD displays.  We have additional resources if you would like to learn more about what is a TFT Display. This type of LCDs is also categorically referred to as an active-matrix LCD.

These LCDs can hold back some pixels while using other pixels so the LCD screen will be using a very minimum amount of energy to function (to modify the liquid crystal molecules between two electrodes). TFT LCDs have capacitors and transistors. These two elements play a key part in ensuring that the TFT display monitor functions by using a very small amount of energy while still generating vibrant, consistent images.

Industry nomenclature: TFT LCD panels or TFT screens can also be referred to as TN (Twisted Nematic) Type TFT displays or TN panels, or TN screen technology.

IPS (in-plane-switching) technology is like an improvement on the traditional TFT LCD display module in the sense that it has the same basic structure, but has more enhanced features and more widespread usability.

Both TFT display and IPS display are active-matrix displays, neither can’t emit light on their own like OLED displays and have to be used with a back-light of white bright light to generate the picture. Newer panels utilize LED backlight (light-emitting diodes) to generate their light hence utilizing less power and requiring less depth by design. Neither TFT display nor IPS display can produce color, there is a layer of RGB (red, green, blue) color filter in each LCD pixels to produce the color consumers see. If you use a magnifier to inspect your monitor, you will see RGB color in each pixel. With an on/off switch and different level of brightness RGB, we can get many colors.

Winner. IPS TFT screens have around 0.3 milliseconds response time while TN TFT screens responds around 10 milliseconds which makes the latter unsuitable for gaming

Winner. the images that IPS displays create are much more pristine and original than that of the TFT screen. IPS displays do this by making the pixels function in a parallel way. Because of such placing, the pixels can reflect light in a better way, and because of that, you get a better image within the display.

As the display screen made with IPS technology is mostly wide-set, it ensures that the aspect ratio of the screen would be wider. This ensures better visibility and a more realistic viewing experience with a stable effect.

Winner. While the TFT LCD has around 15% more power consumption vs IPS LCD, IPS has a lower transmittance which forces IPS displays to consume more power via backlights. TFT LCD helps battery life.

Normally, high-end products, such as Apple Mac computer monitors and Samsung mobile phones, generally use IPS panels. Some high-end TV and mobile phones even use AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diodes) displays. This cutting edge technology provides even better color reproduction, clear image quality, better color gamut, less power consumption when compared to LCD technology.

What you need to choose is AMOLED for your TV and mobile phones instead of PMOLED. If you have budget leftover, you can also add touch screen functionality as most of the touch nowadays uses PCAP (Projective Capacitive) touch panel.

This kind of touch technology was first introduced by Steve Jobs in the first-generation iPhone. Of course, a TFT LCD display can always meet the basic needs at the most efficient price. An IPS display can make your monitor standing out.

LCD: liquid crystal display. Works by adjusting the amount of light blocked. Usually has a backlight but might not (clocks, calculators, Nintendo Gameboy). The green-black ones can be very cheap and are a mature technology. Response time can be slow.

TFT: is a type of LCD with a thin film transistor attached to each pixel. All computer LCD screens are TFT since early 2000s; older ones had slower response times and poorer colour. Cost is now very good; power consumption is fairly good but dominated by the backlight. Has to be manufactured out of glass.

Some manufacturers advertise "LED" displays that are TFT screens with a white LED backlight, which is just confusing. Ones that are real LED screens are usually OLED.

OLED: organic LED (rather than silicon or germanium based like regular LEDs). Comparatively recent technology, so cost still quite variable and not available in really large sizes. In theory can be printed on plastic, resulting in lighter flexible displays with good brightness, good power consumption and good response time.

An organic light emitting diode (OLED), also light emitting polymer (LEP) and organic electro luminescence (OEL), is any light emitting diode (LED) whose emissive electroluminescent layer is composed of a film of organic compounds. The layer usually contains a polymer substance that allows suitable organic compounds to be deposited. They are deposited in rows and columns onto a flat carrier by a simple "printing" process. The resulting matrix of pixels can emit light of different colors.

Such systems can be used in television screens, computer displays, small, portable system screens such as cell phones and PDAs, advertising, information and indication. OLEDs can also be used in light sources for general space illumination, and large-area light-emitting elements. OLEDs typically emit less light per area than inorganic solid-state based LEDs which are usually designed for use as point-light sources.

A significant benefit of OLED displays over traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) is that OLEDs do not require a backlight to function. Thus they draw far less power and, when powered from a battery, can operate longer on the same charge. Because there is no need for a backlight, an OLED display can be much thinner than an LCD panel. Degradation of OLED materials has limited their use so far.

TRIVIA: Nokia N85 is not the first Nokia phone to don an OLED screen. Nokia 8800 Arte, announced in November 2007, is first Nokia device to feature OLED.

There are no substantial differences between the OLED and AMOLED. Active Matrix is simply method for controlling individual pixels and "refining" image rendition.

So the next time you buy a cellphone or any gadget, for that matter, ask if its screen is OLED or just LCD -- because those two are totally different and you definitely get more with OLED.

In this article, we are trying to give you a complete guide to their comparison, so that you can understand their differences and then choose your suitable display technology.

According to the data from Frost & Sullivan, in 2020, LCD is the absolute mainstream display panel technology, with shipments accounting for 96% of the global display market share.

Although the overall share of OLED is not large, due to its unique flexible feature, it can meet the needs of curved and foldable screens and is widely used in fashion and emerging electronic products with a small screen, such as mobile, smart wearables, and VR devices.

According to the data from TrendForce, in 2021, the penetration rate of LCD panels in the smartphone industry is 58%, while AMOLED has caught up and reached 42%, as shown in figure 1.

The full form of OLED is organic light-emitting diode, which is an organic self-luminous material that emits light by itself without the need for a separate backlight or color filter. Each OLED pixel can be assigned three colors red, green, and blue.

Its simple structure is beneficial to the production process and cost management in manufacturing. With the fast response feature, It has great development potential in microdevices for simple displays.

However, the PMOLED is still facing the problems of high power consumption and short lifespan. Currently, the common size of the display is limited to around 5-inch.

Compared with LCD, the OLED screen is a solid-state component, so it can perform better in anti-vibration and low-temperature resistance (normal low operation temperature is -40 ℃).

As shown in the previous structure comparison, due to the existence of the backlight layer and liquid crystal layer, the LCD screen is thicker than the OLED.

In comparison, in addition to light and thin features, OLEDs can be folded almost as freely as origami. The foldable smartphone is supported by OLED technology.

However, in 2022 SDI Display Week, Meta introduced their new generation VR headset Quest 2, which uses the fast switch LTPS LCD technology. The image persistence is low and almost not noticeable in VR game playing.

As the nature of the liquid crystal layer cannot be fully closed, when the LCD panel displays black, some light will pass through the color layer. The black shown on the LCD screen is gray, a combination of white and black.

Unlike LCD, when OLED displays black, the pixels in the black area can be directly turned off to achieve an almost pure black effect. In another word, In theory, OLEDs have an extreme contrast ratio.

Images on OLED will not be distorted from the sides and can maintain their quality and readability from nearly any angle. While the most common LCDs don’t.

Each pixel of OLED work individually, the pixels turn off and consume no power at all when displaying black and consume different energy while displaying different colors in different brightness.

In addition, the organic and self-emitting nature of OLED material is sensitive to humidity and oxygen concentration, resulting in some pixels degrading faster (decay period) than LCDs.

Therefore, the burn-in phenomenon inevitably happens on an OLED screen, more obviously on a big screen, and its average service lifespan is shorter than LCD.

For example, on OLED TVs, burn-in happens on the blue pixels due to high frequent lighting. However, the white screen of OLED TVs will also change due to blue’s diminishing. If we compare the white screen every month, yellowish will be noticed.

For example, if the 1080p LCD screen is replaced with an OLED screen, it is obvious to see the graininesses on the screen. But when the resolution reaches above 2k, this phenomenon is not obvious anymore.

OLED technology is relatively new and in the developing stage, still has a long way to optimize the technology as well as the production processes and yield rate.

Even though the general cost of OLEDs is almost twice as much as LCD panels, OLED panels are still popular in high-end TVs or flagship mobile phones, while LCD panels have occupied the largest share in the whole display market.

As in OLED, it is PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) dimming, which means controlling the brightness by continuously switching on and off the screen at a certain high frequency till it is imperceptible by the naked eye.

Hence, in the low brightness status of the OLED, the screen off time is long, the black field interval become obvious, and the screen on and off (flickers) is noticeable by our naked eyes.

Given the OLED screen is self-illuminating, when watching the screen in a dark environment, the light is strong, which causes more damage to the eyes than the light from LCD.