Hasta La Gadget!

Corning’s Lotus Glass promised a world full of thinner, more advanced mobile displays when it was unveiled in 2011, but it hasn’t always been easy to build with the volumes or features that customers want. Enter the company’s new Lotus XT Glass as the solution: clients can produce it more reliably at high temperatures, leading to more usable panels for our LCDs and OLEDs. The improved yields should not only result in larger device volumes than the original Lotus Glass could muster, but push the technological limits — Corning notes that hotter manufacturing allows for brighter, sharper and more efficient screens. The glass is commercially available today, although we’ll still need to wait for gadget makers to choose, implement and ship it before we notice the XT difference.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile

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Source: Corning

LG has revealed launch plans for its 55-inch curved OLED TV, the gently-flexed überset the company showed off back at CES in January. The LG 55EA9800 will go on sale in South Korea in the next month, though at a healthy premium over the standard, non-curved 55-inch OLED set the company has offered for a few months now.

The flat OLED TV is priced at 11 million Korean won, and went up for preorder in January 2013 with shipments beginning the following month. As for this flexed variant, it will command a 50-percent premium, with LG pricing it at 15m won, or around $13,500.

Beyond the privilege of being at the cutting-edge of hardware, LG says early-adopters of the new TV will benefit from some technical advantages too. Because of the curved screen, the company claims, the distance from all points of the TV to the viewer’s eyes are the same, reducing distortion and blur. That also has an effect on 3D, LG says, with a better quality image than a flat screen can manage.

As for the design, the 55EA9800 is embedded in a carbon fiber reinforced clear plastic stand which weighs in at 17kg, with a minimum thickness of 4.3mm. LG has used transparent thin-film speakers, too, spreading the TV’s audio abilities across the front of the stand but without spoiling the looks.

Samsung, meanwhile, is yet to announce availability of its own curved OLED set, which it also demonstrated back at CES in January. Each of the TVs runs at 1080p Full HD resolution, which means that if home entertainment fans want Ultra HD resolution, they’ll currently need to stick with LCD technology. However, that’s likely to be a gap LG is looking to fill; the company announced it would invest more than $650m into OLED production this year.

LG pips Samsung to market with 55-inch curved OLED TV is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung has hinted at a potential OLED partnership with Google, with chatter from within the company of a deal on OLED TVs after CEO Larry Page visited one of Samsung’s South Korean OLED facilities. “During the meeting with the Google CEO, I proposed the expansion of our business partnership to him” Samsung Electronics vice chairman Lee Jay-yong told The Korea Times, describing Page’s reaction as showing “interest in our OLED business.”

Exactly what stage the talks – if there are, in fact, any at all beyond Page showing interest in where his Korean hosts took him to visit – are in is unclear, though sources inside Samsung suggest that if anything it’s very early days. “We don’t rule out the possibility to enter a new business partnership with Google in OLEDs” one unnamed official told the Korean paper, “but more time will be needed for further details.”

Interestingly, while Samsung has previously made use of OLED panels for Google-branded smartphones, such as the Galaxy Nexus, the chatter between Lee and Page is apparently now around larger displays. Sources within Samsung claim Google wants to increase its collaboration in OLED TV, mimicking some of the relationship the search company has around Google TV and LG.

The ongoing relationship between Samsung and Google has been the stuff of concerted rumor over the past year, with Samsung’s enthusiastic reskinning and general modification of Android – as well as the best-selling nature of the Galaxy series of smartphones – being seen as a challenge to Google’s driving role in the mobile OS. However, Samsung has also been facing issues from Apple, with whom it shares a difficult supplier/competitor relationship.

Samsung continues to supply Apple with many of the components the iPhone maker uses in its smartphone and tablet line-ups, not to mention memory for its Macs, but the two have found themselves frequently at odds in the courtroom over allegations of patent infringement and design copying. More recently, Apple is said to have been diversifying its supply-chain, in what’s believed to be an attempt to reduce its reliance on Samsung components.

How Google’s involvement in OLED production might shift that power dynamic again is unclear, though there remains talk of both Google and Apple having smart TV ambitions yet to be revealed. Last year, tenuous rumors of an LG-made Google Nexus TV circulated, for instance, borrowing the Nexus branding from mobile and extending it into the living room.

[via AndroidBeat]

Samsung and Google chatted OLED partner potential spills VP is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

LG plans to launch a flexible OLED smartphone before the end of the year, the company’s VP of mobile has confirmed, though it’s unclear to what extent the work-in-progress handset will actually flex. The OLED panel in question is the handiwork of LG Display according to VP of LG mobile Yoon Bu-hyun, the WSJ reports, with the proposed device set to launch sometime in Q4.

LG Display’s work on flexible OLEDs has been underway for some time, though the company’s efforts have perhaps been overshadowed somewhat by rival Samsung’s YOUM development. Last year, according to a Korea Times report, LG Display was preparing for mass-production of flexible screens by the second half of 2013.

Samsung, meanwhile, demonstrated a flexible OLED concept back at CES, though the screen wasn’t implemented in quite the way many had expected. Rather than being a clamshell device, with the flexibility used to allow the prototype to open up and reveal a bigger panel, Samsung instead wrapped the display around the edge.

That allowed the handset to display status updates along the side, making for at-a-glance notifications without needing to power up the whole display. However, Samsung insisted at the time that the device was merely a concept of what flexible OLED could be used for, not an indication of an actual product in development.

While OLED panels have become more common in their use on mobile devices, LG Display still faces potential bottlenecks in ensuring supplies for its smartphone affiliate. Analysts have already warned that the next-gen displays still suffer from low yields, which likely means high prices and low numbers of products.

That would probably put the eventual device in line with LG’s curved OLED TVs, demonstrated at CES, officially intended for the market but at a cost that will make the potential audience tiny. Nonetheless, as a proof of capabilities, it suggests we could see flexible OLED phones more widespread in 2014 and beyond.

[via OLED-Info]

LG’s first flexible OLED phone due before the year is out is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

When LG showed off the first curved 3D OLED screen at CES earlier this year, it was sure exciting—but seemed unrealistic as a commercial venture. Now, though, LG has announced that it’s planning to sell the curvy TV. More »