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Apple's Custom MicroLED Displays Likely Heading to iPhone, iPad, and Mac After Apple Watch Ultra
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This kills me. There is very little technical information on MicroLED online at the size and scale these articles mention because it’s vaporware. At this point, any benefits or trade offs are theoretical until someone can demo ANYTHING MicroLED at 7” or smaller.
Yes, exactly like OLED but with silicon emitters rather than organic dye emitters.
Not to be confused with miniLED which is a bit misnamed. There the LEDs are just used for the backlight but the actual image pixels are LCD.
MicroLED offers resistance to burn-in, higher brightness, and less tendency for warping over time than OLED.
Burn-in is accelerated by running the display brighter. The AOD screens are set very dim and burn-in is less likely as a result.
Ah so it’s basically like OLED but with a different chemical composition.
I hope this means real HDR for MacBooks. Especially now that gaming is becoming a thing on Macs again, with Resident Evil Village paving the way.
The 11 Pro Max is my first OLED phone and I was concerned about burn in after seeing some shockingly bad iPhone X and Android screens two years on... But Still on that first-day-purchase phone today, over three years later... I did the white/red/green/blue single colour tests last October when my14 pro max arrived, carefully looking for burn in - I even photographed the screen and boosted the contrast like a poster above did to see if there was any burn in, but since there were no apparent afterimages, and my battery was still at about 85% I decided to send my grossly overpriced 14 pro max back to apple before the end of Apple's one month free trial.
Other than the epicly good macro camera (mind blown!!) its day to day benefits (marginal speed gain, marginally larger screen, brighter) did not outweigh its demerits IMO (chonky af form factor, moar weight, fingerprint magnet, plastic-looking glossy steel sidebars, dynamic shiteland cutting into my YouTube FOV, and PRRRIIIICCCEEEE!!!!).
However, I rarely if ever use my iPhone outside in the daytime, so full brightness is almost never used in my case.
Thus it never gets hot.
Probably why the screen still seems as good as new after three whole years of heavy, daily use.
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This is what I figured would happen. It will probably go something like this: Apple Watch Ultra -> iPhone Pro -> iPad Pro -> MacBook Pro. The non-pro devices will get microLED at a later date.
It's more about consistency and longevity than out of the box image quality... The O in OLED stands for organic... organic compounds are generally (but not always) less stable than inorganic compounds... They usually have shorter lifespans with wider variability and are more difficult to "tame" than inorganic materials.
Any display, though, where temperature and self-illumination vary from pixel to pixel will be, almost by definition more difficult to stabilise their luminosity over time compared with displays that use blanket illumination and passive pixels (typical blanket lit LCD panels).
Micro LED illuminated panels themselves will also likely suffer from back light variability, since LEDs (though to a lesser extent than their Organic counterparts) also get dimmer as they age. So I expect that Micro LED panels will also suffer burn in over time.
Eventually all the products might be having it. But not expecting it to happen anytime soon.
Too optimistic to see Apple would use microLED so soon as nobody else released a consumer product with it yet.
My upgrade strategy is starting to look like this:
- Refurbish iPhone 14 Pro Max late 2023 (I don't like the sound of the solid state buttons for the iPhone 15).
- OLED iPad Pro (hopefully 16 inch) in 2024
- MicroLED AppleWatch Ultra in 2024
- Touchscreen MacBook Pro 16 inch late 2025
Don't forget flying car and self driving roller-skates. 😂
Ref
Apple expected to use hybrid OLED for iPad - THE ELEC, Korea Electronics Industry Media
Apple is expected to use ‘hybrid’ OLED panels in its first OLED iPad that it will launch a few years from now, TheElec has learned.Hybrid OLED panels refer to OLED panels that use both rigid OLED...
www.thelec.net
Apple is expected to use ‘hybrid’ OLED panels in its first OLED iPad that it will launch a few years from now, TheElec has learned.
Hybrid OLED panels refer to OLED panels that use both rigid OLED panel and flexible OLED panel technologies.
Rigid OLED panels use glass as substrates while flexible OLED panels use plastics __ mostly polyimide __ that are encapsulated for protection.
A hybrid OLED panel uses a glass substrate like rigid OLED panels do but also uses the thin-film encapsulation of flexible OLED panels.
Sources said Apple isn’t too keen on using flexible OLED panels __ which are mostly used in premium smartphones __ some parts of the screen may look crumpled.
iPhones currently use flexible OLEDs panels, a larger iPad or Mac display will use rigid hybrid OLED panels that isn’t prone to warping.
The main benefit of micro led over OLED is longevity. The watch screens (at least) get scratched to pieces way before the oled screen hits its end of life.
But I’m typing this on a 5yo iPhone, and if Apple want to crow about long life spans changes like this are a really good thing.
But I’m typing this on a 5yo iPhone, and if Apple want to crow about long life spans changes like this are a really good thing.
Classic Gurman, he really is embarrassing these days isn't he.
Since his spat with prosser, he's really been scraping the barrel to make his newsletter worth it.
Expect him to announce Apple to release a new iPhone in 2023.
Since his spat with prosser, he's really been scraping the barrel to make his newsletter worth it.
Expect him to announce Apple to release a new iPhone in 2023.