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OLED And The Future Of The iPhone

M

modit

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 8, 2008
340
37
Canada
Is it sane to hope, wait, and believe that OLED screens could come to the 4G iPhone? Enough threads on concepts and speculations, I'm asking if it's feasible. We all know Zune HD and it's OLED screen.

I wonder about all the possibilities that OLED will mean for the consumer:

- 7+ Hours Battery Life (ultra low-power screen which could one day bring the all day charge)
- Thin screen could mean a thinner iPhone or I what I'd like to see included instead is a larger battery/flash storage
- MUCH easier to see screen in outdoors IN direct sunlight
- MUCH brighter, Amazing contrast and nearly near-180° viewing angle

It has all of what Mr. Jobs desires. Apple introduced the first unibody laptops so I would personally love to see an aluminum unibody iPhone. Why not? Eco-friendly is great...looking :p

It's gotta happen...right? :D

---------------

Check out MacWorld's What's next for future iPhones (Mon Nov 16) http://www.macworld.com/article/143853/iphone_future.html
 
Hmm, I don't think that it would benefit the battery life to that much of a degree. Data usage eats up the most power. It would be nice, but from everything I've heard, it won't be happening for the next model (which is what I awesome you meant by 4G).

*oops, didn't see the link.

My biggest wishes would be increased battery capacity and a nice flash. The camera quality itself is very good on the 3GS.
 
nooaah said:
Hmm, I don't think that it would benefit the battery life to that much of a degree. Data usage eats up the most power. It would be nice, but from everything I've heard, it won't be happening for the next model (which is what I awesome you meant by 4G).

*oops, didn't see the link.

My biggest wishes would be increased battery capacity and a nice flash. The camera quality itself is very good on the 3GS.
Click to expand...

Uhhhhhh....wrong. The screen eats up a huge chunk of battery.
 
modit said:
- 7+ Hours Battery Life (ultra low-power screen which could one day bring the all day charge)
Click to expand...

I'm really skeptical about this... OLED might be lower power on average (or not), but I don't think it makes up a lot of the variance in the power consumption.

strike1555, I guess I was writing this and got sidetracked while you posted...source?
 
Vandam500 said:
Every type of screen is garbage in the daylight:(. Its nearly 2010 and we still have that problem? Sigh...
Click to expand...

OLED is far worse. You can barely see anything. The other problem with OLED is that it sucks up 3x as much power when displaying white. It's the reason the Zune OS is so dark. It also creates a problem when web surfing because websites have so much whitespace.

While OLED is a nice catchphrase, it's still not ready and we'll have to wait a few generations for them to work through these problems.
 
str1f3 said:
While OLED is a nice catchphrase, it's still not ready and we'll have to wait a few generations for them to work through these problems.
Click to expand...

Exactly. You know Apple is testing with OLED right now, but it will be a few generations before they implement in their products. As of right now, there isn't enough benefit to outweigh it's potential risks. If you haven't seen the Motorola Droid in person yet, you can easily say that if the next gen iPhone simply increases the screen resolution, you'd be much happier. At least that's how I feel. I would kill for the Droid resolution on the iPhone!
 
modit said:
Is it sane to hope, wait, and believe that OLED screens could come to the 4G iPhone? Enough threads on concepts and speculations, I'm asking if it's feasible. We all know Zune HD and it's OLED screen.

I wonder about all the possibilities that OLED will mean for the consumer:

- 7+ Hours Battery Life (ultra low-power screen which could one day bring the all day charge)
- Thin screen could mean a thinner iPhone or I what I'd like to see included instead is a larger battery/flash storage
- MUCH easier to see screen in outdoors IN direct sunlight
- MUCH brighter, Amazing contrast and nearly near-180° viewing angle

It has all of what Mr. Jobs desires. Apple introduced the first unibody laptops so I would personally love to see an aluminum unibody iPhone. Why not? Eco-friendly is great...looking :p

It's gotta happen...right? :D

---------------

Check out MacWorld's What's next for future iPhones (Mon Nov 16) http://www.macworld.com/article/143853/iphone_future.html
Click to expand...

No ty.... OLED is barely seeable under sunlight (which is essential in many people as they walk alot). Also OLED whites draw a bit too much power.

May have vibrant colors, but I'd like to see the screen everywhere thank you.
 
"- MUCH easier to see screen in outdoors IN direct sunlight " - you're mistaken on this point. OLED screens are POOR in daylight.

The other points are fine though; OLEDs have better image quality and are low power screens.
 
So we might have to wait...

:D
matttye said:
"- MUCH easier to see screen in outdoors IN direct sunlight " - you're mistaken on this point. OLED screens are POOR in daylight.

The other points are fine though; OLEDs have better image quality and are low power screens.
Click to expand...

I now see that there might be a problem. The Internet is definitely full of blank white space and if OLED drains the battery even more so then LCD...I guess we'll have to wait until the manufacturers and :apple: hash out the problem out.

In the mean time, more screen real estate (4 inches?) and/or higher resolution would make moi quite happy. :)
 
I think a bigger screen a la hd2, 4.3", would be terrible for whoever tries to use the phone in one hand with the same hand's fingers.. Right now I can barely reach every angle with one thumb. While I welcome a higher resolution enlarging the screen could be a bad move. 3.7" could be ok though.
 
Screen use of power

mkrishnan said:
I'm really skeptical about this... OLED might be lower power on average (or not), but I don't think it makes up a lot of the variance in the power consumption.

strike1555, I guess I was writing this and got sidetracked while you posted...source?
Click to expand...

I'm testing a Droid right now and it has a built-in report that shows, by function, a bar chart of the battery power usage. And from what I've seen, the screen uses the most power. Even when turning on Navigation, which sucks power big time and use GPS and net for dynamic maps, the screen is still using the most power by quite a bit. My guess is that anything that is done to lower screen power consumption will have a big affect on battery life in general.
 
OLED:
- Shorter life than LCD's, although in the past few years have made great improvements to bring their lifespan to that of acceptable
- The blue pigments fail at an earlier rate, causing a shift away from the blue spectrum. This feasibly could be solved with a correction factor/color balancing scheme, but unlikely in a device such as a phone.
- More prone to moisture (but hey, who gets their phone wet anyways?)
- Sucks in daylight, more so than a regular screen. (A Regular LCD screen is backlight, and is able to reflect life to produce its image, whereas an OLED screen creates its own light, and can be outshined by the sun, or other bright light source.)
If you increase the OLED's brightness to overcome this problem, you then draw a lot of power, shortening battery life, or if you add a reflective surface, you lose anywhere from 40-45% of the brightness of the screen


Sources: mostly IEEE Journals. Wrote a hundred page essay on this a year or two back so it might be slightly dated, but general jist should be there.
 
jjprusk said:
I'm testing a Droid right now and it has a built-in report that shows, by function, a bar chart of the battery power usage. And from what I've seen, the screen uses the most power. Even when turning on Navigation, which sucks power big time and use GPS and net for dynamic maps, the screen is still using the most power by quite a bit. My guess is that anything that is done to lower screen power consumption will have a big affect on battery life in general.
Click to expand...

So this is screen in comparison to the GPS receiver, the WiFi/BT/Cell/Data radios, the CPU, and the GPU? Interesting...

Any chance I can get you to post a screenshot? I'm not aware of anything like that for the iPhone and I'm really curious about what the breakout looks like in more detail. :)
 
I'm glad this discussion came up. Back when the 3GS was announced, lots of people complained that Apple wasn't keeping up with the competition because the new phone didn't have an OLED screen. The truth is, the iPhone is far better without it, and Apple knows it.

The last thing we want is the equivalent of a Plasma screen in our phones - ie. a screen that washes out in sunlight, places restrictions on what you can display (on a plasma it's static images that cause problems, and on an OLED it's lots of white space), and only looks good in a dark room. No thanks. Phones demand versatility, and the iPhone has a very versatile screen. I never have problems reading it outdoors.

In the same vein, I'd rather have my 3 megapixel camera on the 3GS than the 5 megapixel cameras that come on some other phones, because the 3GS takes nicer looking pictures most of the time. It's not just about buzzwords, it's about the end result.
 
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