A few years ago, the main criteria considered while choosing a mobile phone were talk time and quality of reception. With increasing complexities and functionalities of handsets, one of the most apparent trends is the increase in energy demand for these devices. There is a lot of talk going on in the industry about the increasing gap between power supplies and the power demand of mobile devices. Display technologies that promise low power consumption are bound to attract a lot of interest as is the case with OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes). It can be predicted that by 2020, OLEDs could potentially replace LCDs (Liquid Crystal Display) in portable applications such as cameras, mobile phones, and music players.
The Journey of Mobile Phones
Earlier, mobile phone displays were used to flash the name and number of the person calling. Then functionalities such as texting and email services were added, which required the display screens to be wider, to attain better visibility. Moving on, the feature of camera was added, which required colourful display, to make the VGA (Visual Graphics Array) photos sharper in terms of resolution. Following still images were videos, which required the refresh rates to be faster.
The era has now arrived for smartphones and touch screens, which require the display screen to provide higher resolution images, better brightness indoors as well as outdoors, which are all captured under a touch screen layer.
Moving Ahead
In this era of technological advances, AMOLED has emerged as a viable option. LCD has been a choice of comparatively lower cost smartphones, such as HTC wildfire, as well as of expensive handsets,such as iPhone4. But AMOLED appears to be a more promising technology.
