Apple Planning To Release iPhone With OLED Display Sooner Than Expected?

Apple is expected to adopt an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display on the iPhone -- the question is when.  A new report claims this could happen as soon as next year.

The move from LCD to OLED could happen in 2017, according to a report in the Chinese-language version of Japan's Nikkei. The news was cited by AppleInsider. Japanese-language blogs have also reported the news. Reports last year claimed this would not happen until 2018.

An OLED display would allow Apple to, among other things, make an iPhone with a curved display. But bringing out a curved-display iPhone may not be possible by next year, so Apple could settle for a more conventional OLED, according to the report.

I asked Raymond Soneira, a display expert at DisplayMate Technologies, about this. "The real question is whether Apple can or should jump in one step from a flat LCD to a curved screen OLED? That would require tremendous changes in the chips, electronics, mechanical design, industrial design, OS and App software development," he said in an email. "Apple generally makes small and steady incremental changes rather than drastic changes all at once - so my guess is that they won't do it all at once."

Samsung has opted for OLED displays for good reasons: in addition to offering the curved-screen OLED on the Galaxy edge series, the displays can offer better power efficiency, better contrast, deeper blacks, and more saturated colors.