qHD Super AMOLED Plus?

Because Samsung wants to give you a reason to buy the Galaxy SIII.

 

OLED technology is still developing. Samsung was the first to break the 3", 3.5", and 3.7" barriers. Now they have a 4.3" screen. However, pixel density and size just don't go together well for OLED yet, at least not at an affordable price (I think Sony still charges 5 figures for their 20" OLED TV).

We're getting there, but OLED-based displays will be smaller and/or lower resolution than comparable LCDs for the foreseeable future.

 

OLED screens have been printed on paper in the lab so there are many possibilities for this tech. The resolution will come up and remember higher res means more drag on the processors.

 

At the speed the tech is progressing, I'm eager to see how screens will look like in a couple years.

Thanks guys for the answers. I was curious about this too.

 

I'm sure you're aware that OLEDs are produced on a different manufacturing line than LCDs, right? To date Samsung has used a shadow mask lithography process for patterning OLEDs but they're in the process of ramping on a new process that utilizes laser-based lithography. The issue is that shadow masking has a minimum size for printing that only permits pixel densities in the low 200's. The laser-based process will permit over 300ppi and pave the way for qHD Super AMOLED Plus. Last I heard was that June/July was the turn on time, but that was awhile ago so not sure if the schedule has slipped. Curiously, it would make qHD SA+ ready in the Fall.

If you want to read more specific info:

Super AMOLED Plus resolution - further details

If you guys are interested in display technologies, you should read up on Mirasol. Not sure about it as a cell phone display, but it would be killer as an e-reader display. The more incident light (think being outdoors on a really sunny day), the brighter and more vivid the display. It's based on reflection and light wavelength filtering. Problem is, in it's simple form, it needs incident light so it suffers from low light situations. Kinda the antithesis of LCD and AMOLED. It's based off of the concept of what makes butterfly wings colorful. Cool stuff.

http://www.oled-info.com/qualcomm-sees-mirasol-displays-eventually-competing-oleds

 

I believe the kind printed on paper (or any other media like glass in windshields) are made out of carbon nanotubes. They qualify as organic because of the carbon, and they are LEDs, but they have little to do with the OLED screens on TV. Totally separate tech with similar name (OLED).

 

Placebo effect

 

Placebo probably doesn't completely accurately describe the phenomenon, but in general we humans tend to ascribe many more positive traits to something that we perceive looks good.

In the same way that we think of taller, more handsome men as smarter and better leaders, when you look at a Super AMOLED+ screen that is pretty much the most vibrant, saturated, high contrast screen available for any mobile device, it's easy for our brains to perceive that the screen also offers better detail (not to mention the fact that increased contrast is frequently perceived as increased detail).

 

It could be that the qHD screens that have recently come out appear to be using the pentile matrix with fewer sub-pixels. The SA+ screens switched to the RGB matrix with more sub-pixels. Could be what is causing the perceived finer detail on a display with "less" resolution.

 

I'm dying to check out a SAMOLED+ screen now that PenTile is out of the equation. Anyone who was a SAMOLED fan is going to love SAMOLED+ in my opinion.

Thinking ahead, Samsung surely knows that it has a winning technology here. It would make sense for them to boost production and start selling SA+ screens to other manufacturers. They actually started to do this a while back, which is why some Droid Incredible phones have SAMOLED screens. But back then, they weren't equipped for the demand (smartphone boom) so they started hogging the screens for themselves.

I would have no problem with a non-PenTile SAMOLED on a future phone. I'm not married to either LCD or OLED at this point.

 

cheaper retina displays in OLED tech? sounds good to me. And by the time those are mainstream, we'll have the processing power to support that kind of resolution.

Damn, with Android, looks like I'm going to be permanently ditching my old mantra of "use a phone for at least 3 years before replacing it."

 

I wouldn't expect to see them on mobiles until the Galaxy S III or maybe a special edition Galaxy S II which would be nice. Providing them to HTC or another mobile manufacturer now would nullify one of the Galaxy S II best selling points so I don’t think it would be in their best interest