Next-Gen Display: MicroLEDs
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
I’m wondering if this is a “flying car” thing—if actually handing consumers ultra-thin bendable (but not actually creasable) panels would be a dumb idea, because consumers would try to exceed their tolerances and break them too easily.
(This is also, I think, why we don’t see more optical cabling standards outside of the enterprise space. The average consumer can’t be trusted to install a glass-fibre cable run without breaking it; and when they break it, they’ll get angry, because glass-fibre cables still cost a lot of money. And plastic-fibre cabling, though more tolerant, is far less of an improvement over copper, especially in attenuation distance.)
I don't see the point of a display that folds. The display would be worse than any I currently own. It would be more prone to breakage due to the nature of what you're asking it to do.
I think it's one of those technologies that sounds neat, but in reality is not that useful (like 3D tvs)
3D TV's, on the other hand, I love and am very sad that they're now not being produced... Just when the size and resolution of TVs is getting good enough to make them worthwhile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKG7XRsG9KQ
(plus it would sell really well)
Flexible displays are far too fragile to be practical except in applications where they're literally bent only once and then affixed to something for the rest of their life.
Also, aren't they used for curved TV screens and computer monitors?
There is a catch that programming these displays require one to learn differential geometry as a prerequisite.
I had the iliad, a Dutch tablet in the very early days of e-paper. Slow, unworkable latency in drawing, buggy software, low support for digital book formats. I tried a few other e-paper devices since then, but they didn't improve on a lot.
The Microsoft Surface 2 seriously improved on this space. But it was still not feeling well - still too much lag. And then there is the huge problem that Windows is not suitable for tablets - it's a nightmare to work with compared to Android.
Surface 3 got it right enough, the feel is good enough to do some serious drawing on it. Microsoft OneNote is pretty much ideal for many usecases but has its cases where it becomes unbearingly slow. I have not yet tried the Surface 4 or the iPad Pro.
The ideal of an android device with a OneNote version which supports plugins and an app-store on a color latencyless e-paper display is still a decade away it seems.
There problem is, screens need a protective layer on top, and bendable glass tech hasn't caught up. You need to be able to embed a touch layer, have good optical clarity, be scratch resistant, and impart resistant.
I've, gently, played with production ready bendable LCDs. Then realized that they weren't practical for any of the sci-fi scenarios I had imagined.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/band
http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/gear-fit2/
Actual applications do exist. :)
Lots of cell phones have screens with a slight curve to them now days. Or in the case of Samsung's edge displays, a rather dramatic curve.
To the best of my knowledge, neither display in those fitness products was flexible, just bendable.
I know that as of a few years ago, Corning was hard at work on flexible "glass" for flexible displays.
This is what I don't get. It's entirely possible that I'm particularly unimaginative, but I can't even think of any devices with screens I'd want to bend. All of my devices bend exactly as much as I want them to: none (or at least negligibly).
How about a 75' TV you can carry around like a scroll.
It'd be a rather thick scroll. :)
The problem of break-ability again comes to mind.
The use case is niche. All the electronics for control still have to be there, so it isn't featherweight or anything, and it is not exactly pocket sized, and now the screen is really fragile.
Burn-in is still a huge issue. I've used mine for about a year and the red channel is full of distracting burn-in patterns from still elements on my screen from things like wallpapers, tiled window borders, taskbar/docks, HUDs from games, etc.
Does anyone know if MicroLEDs could suffer from burn-in as well? I.e. do they also degrade over time based on usage?
I've tested this by filling my screen with each color, and burn-in is by far the most visible with a red fill.
To your point, reports are that Apple is starting with Apple Watch.
See: http://itsbeau.com/work/avatar/ (scroll down)
Which leads me to wonder: would a microLED array make a better camera input than current CCDs?
Micro LEDs would need to be far, far smaller to be used as sensors.
(also see links at the end of that article)
Or, alternatively, the display can be made from a whole wafer, which will cost about a thousand dollars for the raw materials and perhaps $5k for the finished display.
I know technology tends to advance a lot, but the advances required for microled to work seem really far fetched. Also, display technology does not advance as quickly as digital computation technology. Remember we have been talking about OLEDs for at least 20 years now and they are only now becoming mainstream.
This technology, if it ever works, will be for very small devices where brightness is very important but resolution is not that important. So smart glasses and smart watches. Even for those applications it is not at all certain that they will be able to bring the cost down sufficiently.
Now get that to 300-400 dpi in the palm of your hand. That's the issue with getting it "working" in a phone. Quite different.
Source: last charged my watch (3HR) more than a week ago; 47% remaining.
I knew I'd never actually use it but was hoping it'd be relatively hackable and I'd think of a use case for it. That never eventuated.
Secondly, you only get long battery life in a small package one tiny step at a time, and you want them, either to increase battery life or to make smaller watches. The latter is particularly hard. A typical smart watch is around 10 mm thick, nowadays, 2 or so of which are taken by the display and the back panel. So, if you want to make it 8 mm thick, you lose 25% of inner volume and, ballpark, the same on battery volume (taking into account that the battery is shielded, likely closer to 30%)
Finally, I’m not sure that transflective display is that low power if you want to frequently update the display. Looking at the data sheet of https://eu.mouser.com/new/Sharpsma/sharpmemorylcd/, page 14 lists power use of 15 μW on a static display, 50 μW on a display that updates at 1 Hz. Extrapolating, I get 2115 μW at 60 Hz, or about 2 mW. The capacity of a typical smartwatch battery is less than 1 Wh, so that display could display video for 500 hours or 20 days (rounded up a few times)
With respect to power consumption, the video codec would probably draw more than 100mW [1], and at that point, the 2mW display consumption would not matter.
[1] a 640x480@15fps hardware decoder draws 71mW. https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/classes/fa11/cse291-a/pdf/02/JSSC_st...
Still larger, more so if you go to 30 Hz or higher, but there is no silver bullet if you want a smaller watch or longer battery life.
Anyone has a ballpark figure for Si wafers? All I found quickly was a chart image mentioning around 3k USD ( http://semimd.com/blog/2014/05/16/st-licenses-28nm-fd-soi-to... )
ILI9341 modules are less than $5 each, and have 16/18-bit color with typical resolutions of 240x320. You can separate the actual panel from its backlights and casing without damaging it if you're careful, so I was thinking of trying to maybe put one in a box for a sort of DIY projector or something.
But I'm also pretty sure there's some reason why it won't work; maybe the glass is too polarized, maybe the colors are too dim, etc.
I just got myself an abandoned one - the Karolinska Institute, where I work, is moving, and they are throwing away a lot of crap. I took one of the overhead projectors, stripped out the old 240 Watts lamp + cooling unit (to be replaced with a less energy-draining yet brighter LED panel from the inside. Perhaps even one of those that can be programmed to change colors).
You can certainly build a DIY projector that way. Building a high quality projector is hard but a crappy one is very simple. If you jam an LCD between a light source and a lens at the right distances you will get an image. Slide projectors, camera lenses, magnifying glass lenses, even those fresnel page magnifier lenses work.
Not sure if I understand this correctly, do they mean moving micro-LEDs during the manufacturing process, or when the device is being used? If it is the latter, it seems ridiculously cool!
I'm totally fine with Apple prioritize form over function when it comes to wearable, after all, I don't buy mechanical watches for their "functions".
Disappointed that this article has IEEE's brand.