There's no such thing as a silver bullet, or an outright winner in the next-generation digital screen races.
Just like the last generation of flat-screen technologies, where LCD has largely beaten plasma screens to a bloody pulp, the next change of the guard promises to offer some solid excitement -- all the way to the finish line. OLED screens are coming on strong to challenge the LCD hegemony, but the incumbent technology isn't taking it sitting down. In the latest development, Sony
Freeze-frame!
Here's how the battle lines are being drawn right now:
Factor |
LCD |
OLED |
---|---|---|
Status |
Top dog |
Underdog |
Manufacturing |
Tons of capacity, well-known technology |
A mere trickle, but potentially cheaper and faster later on |
Cost |
Bearable |
Terrible |
Operating lifetime |
Up to 100,000 hours (11.4 years) |
Green and red pixels: up to 600,000 hours (roughly a human lifetime), but blue only recently reached 34,000 hours in processes usable on display screens |
Battery drainage |
Reportedly better than OLED thanks to a new power management system |
Better than old-school LCDs thanks to lack of backlighting and power-efficient OLED materials |
Visual quality |
A selling point for Apple's |
A selling point for Verizon's |
Manufacturing capacity is holding OLED back today in a big way. Samsung and LG Display
According to HTC CEO Peter Chou, Sony's new LCD screens can hold their own next to the OLED screens he's been using on some handsets. In fact, he hopes to be able to make the switch from OLED to LCD without consumers even noticing. The claims of LCD screens equaling their OLED peers may or may not be true – for example, reviews of the iPhone's LCD screen have been phenomenal -- and it may or may not be an ethical way of approaching the switch. However, the LCD move seems necessary at this point due to equipment shortages.
Orchestral maneuvers in the dark
Verizon has long reported the OLED-equipped Droid Incredible as being out of stock, pushing back the delivery time and time again. Right now, your Incredible phone is only a week away if you order one today. The Droid X by Motorola
But if Chou is right about Sony's improved LCD screens, previously unavailable OLED phones may soon become available with a different screen. And you might be none the wiser if you picked up a revamped model.
So now it looks like the ball is back in the court of Universal Display
What's up?
Samsung's newest OLED plant fires up the manufacturing lines sometime next year, instantly multiplying the supply of OLED screens many times over. It'll be the first time OLED really is ready for mass-production on the scale someone like Apple needs, and will empower gadget builders and network operators to throw some serious marketing muscle behind the technology. By then, both LCD and OLED displays will undoubtedly look better and last longer already, and it's anyone's guess which one will be more power-efficient.
In the long run, I still believe that OLED will win out, though. LCD tech has been around for a long time, and you can only push a technology so far before the laws of physics start to impose some hard limits. OLED, on the other hand, is barely out of diapers and has many years of improving technology and economics ahead of it. And Universal Display is the only true pure-play investment available in the sector. You know what to do.