Power Consumption is a measure of how much power is required for a display to produce a certain level of brightness. In theory, OLEDs have an inherent advantage in that they only consume power when they emit light. For example, a black OLED pixel consumes no power. An LCD backlight consumes constant power regardless of the image being displayed. However, LCDs still hold a slight advantage over the OLEDs currently in production. Future generations of OLED displays will be far more efficient than their LCD counterparts.
DigiDelve’s proprietary Steered Beam Display dramatically reduces the power consumed by an OLED display by up to 50 times.
Resolution is a measure of the maximum size of the display in terms of inches and pixel count. The manufacturing process for Active Matrix LCDs (AM-LCDs) is very mature, and units exceeding 60″ are commercially available with resolutions well over 1600×1200. On the other hand, OLEDs are still maturing and typically are commercially available only in 4″ or less with resolutions of 320×240.
The Cost of an AM-LCD is currently about half that of a comparable AM-OLED display. This is again due to the maturity of the LCD manufacturing processes and facilities. The components comprising a typical LCD display are actually more expensive than those in an OLED display. However, OLED manufacturing facilities suffer from low yields, currently at 60%-70%. The higher cost and low output of OLED panels due to faulty yield closes off large portions of the potential market to panel makers. Also contributing to the cost is simply the inability of manufacturers to deliver enough units to satisfy large orders.
DigiDelve’s proprietary Zero-Defect Layout minimizes the problem of dead pixels, thus significantly increasing OLED yields and lowering costs.
The Lifetime of a display is the number of hours it takes for the display to drop to half its initial brightness. Most displays require lifetimes of over 100,000 hours to be commercially viable. The organic compounds in an OLED that produce the different colors each have different lifetimes, with reds and greens typically having lifetimes close to or exceeding 100,000 hours. The blue material, however, has a much shorter lifetime, often as low as 10,000 hours. Thus, the lifetime for an OLED display is generally thought to equal the lifetime of its blue material.
Furthermore, since each color on an OLED ages at a different rate, the display will undergo a dramatic color shift well before the lifetime of the display is reached. Whites can become yellow even within the first thousand hours. Because of this differential aging of the emissive materials, the useful lifetime for an OLED is actually much shorter than the stated lifetime of the blue material.
DigiDelve’s proprietary Ageless OLED solves the problem of differential aging and increases the useful lifetime for a typical OLED display to well over 100,000 hours.