Currently, there are two main types of display panel for our electronic devices: LCDs and OLED. Each technology has certain advantages and disadvantaged compared with the other. LCD has traditionally been the cheaper and more prevalent technology; the early PDAs used LCD screens all the way to some of today’s flagship handsets. It can be wasteful of energy as it requires a backlight to be illuminated for the whole display, whereas OLED (organic light emitting diode) screen technology only illuminates those pixels that are needed. This is the reason why OLED screens have very black blacks: there is no illumination here, whereas with an LCD screen, the black is still being illuminated.
We also have AMOLED technology, which stands for “active matrix organic light emitting diode” technology as favoured by Samsung. The more modern versions of Android, inspired by the 2013 Motorola Moto X’s Moto Display technology, now have a greater purpose for OLED technology other than deeper blacks: the device can show notifications on the screen in a power efficient way when it is moved. The device shows the user waiting notifications by only illuminating these particular pixels without waking the whole screen. Without going into any more details as to why the different screens are favoured by different individuals or organisations, AMOLED display technology is generally considered to be superior for devices, notwithstanding certain disadvantages, as it is thinner and may be made flexible. We have already seen a number of devices released with a curved screen, such as the Google Nexus S and of course, the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, the Galaxy S6 edge and similar models. AMOLED technology is also favoured for designers of extremely thin handsets.
South Korean technology giant, Samsung, have already been mentioned several times in this article but it is time to introduce another South Korean technology giant, LG. LG have a successful display business manufacturing both LCD and OLED panels. Today, the company has announced a plan to invest 450 billion won, that’s about $400 million, into South Korean factories and other production facilities in order to manufacture flexible OLED display technologies and lighting panels. This will be split between 310 billion won to boost OLED capacity and the balance, 140 billion won, to build a new, dedicated OLED lighting manufacturing line. This 450 billion won is added to the 1.05 trillion won LG committed last summer into building its fourth OLED factory in South Korea.