Well, would you have a gander at that? That, friends, is Apple’s long-awaited, hardly-forgotten white iPhone 4, and so far as we can tell, this is actually the real deal. We’ve seen retailers making space for the elusive handset over the past few months, and earlier today, we heard that Vodafone UK’s inventory systems were showing the white iPhone 4 as shipping in.
The white iPhone 4 seems to be for real this time. Another reason why one, a brand new iPhone will be coming later than sooner. Two, unlike what Joshua Topolsky might think, the next iPhone will probably look the same as it looks now and be called iPhone 4S.
Sharp indicated that in collaboration with Semiconductor Energy Laboratory, it has developed and will commercialize a thin-film transistor using InGaZnO. High energy performance LCD panels will be made possible by downsizing the transistor and by increasing the light transmittance for each pixel.
InGaZnO is an oxide semiconductor that allows for thinner thin film transistors (TFTs). TFTs are not transparent and block light so making them thinner allows more light to pass through from the backlight unit. Another benefit might be higher resolutions: more TFTs can be crammed into the same sized LCD. Sharp will combine oxide TFTs with its Ultraviolet-induced Multi-domain Vertical Alignment (UV2A) technology that improves contrast ratio, aperture ratio, response times, and manufacturing costs, yields, and throughput.
Update: Charles Annis, VP, Manufacturing Research, DisplaySearch:
All leading LCD and AMOLED producers have been working on oxide semiconductor TFTs (typically a-IGZO). IGZO offers the potential of low cost and electron mobilities of 10-30X those of a-Si. Higher electron mobility can be used to reduce device size and increase aperture ratio, enhance electronic device integration on to the glass, increase TFT speed, ultra high definition (UD) displays like 4K × 2K at 240 Hz, and is sufficient to drive AMOLED pixels. It is unclear exactly when Sharp started research on oxide semiconductors for TFT LCD, but in December 2009 Sharp presented a paper at IDW Japan suggesting that it had resolved all major issues inhibiting IGZO FPD mass production.
All View Consulting via DigiTimes: LCD TV unit sales increased 5.2% Y/Y to 9.08 million in China during the first quarter of 2011. Sales revenue, on the other hand, decreased 6.6% Y/Y to CNY35.1 billion. LCD TVs will generally get cheaper, reaching more of the potential market. The average selling price in the first quarter was CNY3,866 or about US$593 based on current exchange rates at the time of this writing.
The DROID Charge is designed with Samsung’s 4.3-inch Super AMOLED™ Plus display, setting a new touchscreen standard for brightness, clarity and outdoor visibility.
I believe the Samsung DROID Charge will be the first smartphone to make use of a Super AMOLED Plus, which uses a RGB sub-pixel structure instead of PenTile Matrix.
Verizon CFO Fran Shammo via Barron’s:
The fluctuation, I believe, will come when a new device from Apple is launched, whenever that may be, and that we will be, on the first time, on equal footing with our competitors on a new phone hitting the market, which will also be a global device.
This can be taken two ways. One, using Qualcomm’s Gobi chipset an iPhone could work with both GSM and CDMA networks. The other take would be that the next iPhone would be a data device only.
I say the next iPhone, which I have been guessing will be called the iPhone 4S will work on both GSM and CDMA networks. Apple wants this to happen because making fewer models improve manufacturing efficiency, lower costs, and improves profit margins. The next step, probably next year, might be a LTE-based data-only iPhone 5.
Apple’s solution would address the issues associated with edge-lit backlights for LCD displays by utilizing a “light guide” Coupled with a “light-extracting surface area,” it could compensate for color shift issues found with current edge-lit displays, like those found in Apple’s MacBook Pro notebooks.
The problem: phosphor-coated white LED light has a blue-ish tint in short distances and turns yellow-ish the longer it travels. This variation affects color uniformity on a LCD using a white LED-based backlight unit. This patent thoroughly mixes the light to make sure light hitting the color filter is uniform in color.
In a period of less than eight weeks, we activated 2.2 million iPhones, and in two weeks, we activated more than 260,000 of our first 4G LTE smartphone, the HTC ThunderBolt, at the premium price of $249.99.
27. That’s the per minute rate of iPhone sales during those eight weeks. The HTC ThunderBolt was almost 13 per minute. This business of selling phones is insane.
Compared to the 3.6 million iPhones AT&T sold in the same time frame, Verizon falls short. But in AT&T’s number non-iPhone 4s were included. And there are AT&T iPhone users that are unwilling to pay the ETF and waiting for their contracts to end. It will be interesting to see iPhone sales trends between the two carriers in the next several quarters.
AGC:
AGC announced today it has developed the world’s thinnest soda-lime glass substrate for touchscreens, measuring just 0.28 mm or 15% less than the currently thinnest commercial substrate at 0.33 mm, as well as being 15% lighter, promising to further shrink smartphone and tablets in the near future.
AGC uses the float process of manufacturing LCD glass substrates and will begin mass production of this ultra-thin 0.28-mm soda-lime glass later this month.
Toshiba Mobile Display Co., Ltd. (Fukaya City, Saitama Pref.), a wholly-owned subsidiary and manufacturer of medium- and small-sized LCD displays, started partial production at its manufacturing line in Fukaya on March 28 and will resume full operation by the end of April. The company is supplying some products from Ishikawa Works, the company’s other production facility in Ishikawa Prefecture.
Toshiba Mobile Display (TMD) manufactures high-end LTPS-based LCDs. Although I don’t know whether or not the company began manufacturing displays for Apple, the Fukaya line is on its way back to full operation. My prayers go to Japan.
Alec Shapiro, Sony Professional Solutions of America senior vice president via Entertainment Technology Center:
Sony’s NAB booth is dominated with new camcorders, 3D gear, and advances in 4K and HDCAM-SR recording options but it is the thinnest of products, reference-grade OLED monitors, that Alec Shapiro, Sony Professional Solutions of America senior vice president, points to as the biggest game changer today. And for good reason: it’s the first flat-panel monitor that can truly lay claim to the CRT monitor crown for reference work.
The newly-announced Trimaster EL professional OLED monitors, though outrageously expensive, meet the front screen performance of CRT monitors according to Shapiro. I agree that an OLED future is inevitable but it might take a long time.
DisplayBlog is written and produced by Jin Kim. Subscribe via RSS.