Over one million iPhone 3GS have been sold in the opening three days. I’m sure there are millions more customers that are enjoying super speeds, great photo and video capabilities and the upgraded GPS thanks to the integrated magnetometer. But a few owners are not very happy at all. For some the iPhone 3GS seems to be heating up, enough to change the color of the white iPhone 3GS to something a bit less cool: brown.
The likely culprit? Faulty battery cells. Because these batteries are mass manufactured the problems that are being seen by some of the users can affect a lot more. Look at the picture of white iPhone 3GS and you can see the brown outline where the battery is located.
No one should take faulty batteries lightly. If you are experiencing your iPhone 3GS running extpremely hot, make sure to take it to the nearest Apple store and let them know and ask for a replacement. In the long run a hot-running iPhone 3GS will completely fail: battery overheats, produces gas, battery expands, expansion puts pressure on adjacent components, components get damaged, iPhone fails.
Source: Wired
Taiwan’s largest LCD manufacturer AU Optronics (AUO) will be looking carefully at the LCD market for the next two to three months to decide whether or not to invest US$3 billion in a G8.5 TFT LCD fab. AUO already has the land where the massive manufacturing plant will be built. If AUO decides to go ahead and invest in a G8.5 fab operations will commence some time in 2011. According to Andrew Tang, assistant vice president of Taiwan International Securities, AUO is considering the investment to meet the demand for LCD TV panels from China and to improve its competitiveness. Samsung and LG Display, the top LCD producers, already have G8 plants. (more…)
Sharp‘s LCD panels are banned from being imported into the US. The US International Trade Commission issued a ruling that bans the importation of Sharp LCD panels. Why? Sharp LCD panels allegedly infringe one of Samsung‘s wide viewing angle patents. Both Samsung and Sharp use a base technology called VA or Vertical Alignment for their higher-end wide viewing angle LCDs. Samsung’s version is called PVA for Patterned Vertical Alignment and Sharp’s is called ASV for Advanced Super View.
Because Sharp is heavily vertically integrated most of its AQUOS line of LCD TVs use its own LCD panels. This ban will most likely affect many other brands that make use of Sharp’s LCD panels. The ban is subject to review by President Obama and the case can be appealed.
If this ban is enforced Sharp’s performance in the US will be significantly affected. With demand already down considerably from a year ago most LCD TV brands are doing all they can to incentivize customers to purchase LCD TVs. But if Sharp can’t even get its LCD TVs inside the US border it will be at a huge disadvantage. Most likely Sharp will appeal right away. Manufacturing plants in Mexico as well as in China might experience a build up of LCD TV inventory made with Sharp LCD panels.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Lenovo‘s ThinkPad T400s is a 14.1-inch notebook PC that is just 0.83-inch thick and includes an optical drive: DVD burner or Blu-ray player. A couple of notables: the delete and escape keys have been enlarged. According to David Hill, a Lenovo designer responsible for the X300 and the T400s, we use the delete key about 700 times per week. I guess we make a lot of mistakes! The good folks at Lenovo also built in mute buttons for the mic and speakers making it more convenient for those that use VoIP. But more importantly, I’m wondering about the 14.1-inch LCD.
Lenovo states that it has a LED backlight but not much else. In my opinion, even more important than the backspace, escape keys and mute buttons is the LCD. No matter what we’re doing we’re staring into the LCD as long as we’re on the computer. The LCD doesn’t have to be professional-caliber since most T400s users will be using Office applications instead of PhotoShop, but I hope the LCD is not of the crappy kind. Want more effective presentations? Make colors pop and viewable at an angle! To do that you’ll need a decent LCD. I now expect better LCDs in notebook PCs. Do you? You should.
via Engadget
Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning. With over 50,000 applications available from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever.
That’s from Steve Jobs, Apple‘s CEO. Welcome back Steve! Apple announced on June 22, 2009 that the company had sold more than one million iPhone 3GS models through Sunday, June 21, the third day after its launch. The iPhone 3GS is twice as fast as the iPhone 3G, has a longer battery life and a much improved camera that can also take video. It also has a lot more capacity: 16GB and 32GB–more than some netbooks out there. It took a lot longer for T-Mobile’s G1 smartphone to get to the million mark–I believe it was around six months. Palm’s Pre is considered to be a success, and I agree, but the numbers pale in comparison: analysts put it at 100,000 unit sales. I don’t know the exact timeframe for those sales but I assume they were during the weekend that it launched. Apple’s iPhone franchise is a winner and sales growth does not seem to be slowing down. Unfortunately, I will be waiting until June 2010 to get my next iPhone. Do you own an iPhone 3G? Are you getting the 3GS?
I was hoping the iPhone 3G S would sport an OLED display. But that didn’t happen. Now there is gossip, encouraging gossip, keeping my hopes for a future OLED-based iPhone. The rumor is this: LG Display has been testing multitouch OLED panels that are fingerprint resistant. No more fingerprints… now that would be quite nice!
An OLED display would make the iPhone even thinner and last longer. The contrast would be better than almost all of the best TVs out there! Colors would be absolutely amazing. Of course, it wouldn’t last for more than a few years. But, hey, we don’t need our iPhones to last that long–we would gladly be forced to upgrade to a new iPhone every year! Actually, researchers are working hard to improve the longevity of OLED materials so they are long enough that we won’t have to worry.
An ultra-thin iPhone without the fingerprint problem… I like it. According to my estimation, we should expect Apple’s fingerprint-resistant multitouch OLED iPhone 4G to be announced at WWDC 2010 in June. Fingers crossed.
Source: Ubergizmo, OLED-Display
PC Magazine’s Michael Miller visited LG Display‘s Paju LCD cluster in South Korea and came away “incredibly impressed”. The LCD cluster in Paju currently has two factories running: one G7 and one G8. This alpha-numeric code represents the generation that these LCD fabrication plants represent. Larger numbers mean that the LCD factory can handle larger glass substrates or sheets. For instance, LG Display’s G7 can handle glass substrates that are 1950 x 2250mm. Translated into inches the dimension of a glass sheet is 76.8-inch x 88.6-inch. Quite large. But the larger G8 fabrication plant handles 2200 by 2500mm glass substrates or 86.6-inch by 98.4-inch. Massive! There’s even a G10 that is being operated by Sharp that is quite a bit larger than that.
With these large glass substrates, the factories manufacture LCDs. The G7 fab can manufacture eight 42-inch LCD panels or six 47-inch from a single glass substrate. The larger G8 fab can do a bit more: 18 32-inch, eight 47-inch or six 55-inch. The Paju LCD cluster is home to about 15000 employees during the day. A dormitory on-site houses 5700. LG Display has carved out enough space for three additional LCD factories. Hop on over to PC Magazine to read the full article.
OLED-Info’s Ron Mertens asked Mr. Won Kim, Vice Presideont of OLED Sales and Marketing at LG Display, a few questions–among them:
You have been showing a 15″ OLED TV prototype since the beginning of 2009… and you said it can begin production by June 2009. Which is now.. will you start making these panels? Or are you still waiting for a customer?
The answer will make OLED fans really happy:
During the period of Dec 2009-Jan 2010, our customer will launch 15″ OLED TV in Korean market. Thereafter global roll-out follows.
Our customer? Probably… most likely LG. Price? The price was not revealed. Head on over to OLED-Info for more Q&A.
Samsung‘s WB1000, a 12 megapixel compact digital camera, makes use of an impressive 3-inch OLED display. The WB1000 features a 24mm wide-angle 5x zoom Schneider-KREUZNACH lens coupled with a 1/2.33-inch CCD. You can also capture 720p HD video in H.264. It’s got both optical and digital image stabilization.
3-inch OLED The WB1000 sports an impressive Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED) with a 480 x 260 resolution. The video shows that the AMOLED is significantly better than a LCD by comparing to a Canon SD990 IS. I must say I am impressed. I was surprised to see the OLED perform so well in brightly-lit environments.
Cost The added cost of integrating the 3-inch AMOLED does not seem to have affected the price too much. The WB1000 is KRW548,000 or a little above US$400. Amazon has the WB1000 for just US$361.16
via Engadget
Average LCD monitors all have a color gamut of at least 72 percent NTSC. Some go up to more than 100 percent. The same goes for LCD TVs. Notebook PCs? 99 percent of LCDs that go into notebooks are almost terrible. The color gamut is limited to about 45 percent NTSC. Viewing angles are really terrible. As far as I know there are no PVA, MVA or IPS LCD panels made for notebook PCs. Thankfully things are about to change. Thanks to Apple.
Yesterday, Apple introduced new MacBook Pro notebook PCs with decent LCDs sporting a color gamut that is 50 percent more than your typical fare. That 50 percent increase amounts to about 72 percent NTSC. With this move Apple has set LCD performance expectations for what a good notebook PC must have. I foresee other brands to follow very soon.
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