KDDI Finally Introduces Organic EL Panel Mobile Phone, 'Life Lasts over 3 Years'

Jan 17, 2007 16:46 Takuya Otani, Nikkei Electronics

KDDI Corp. will shortly launch a mobile phone featuring an active matrix organic EL panel as its primary display. The display is a 2.4-inch, 260,000-color panel with 320 x 240 (QVGA) resolution.

The main reason that commercial release of a handset incorporating an organic EL panel became a reality is that "the panel has finally secured the reliability required for commercial application" (a KDDI spokesperson). Specifically, the panel life, a time before luminance degrades to half the initial luminance, exceeds "three years," which matters so much because it is the period the company assumes as an average cycle of handset replacement. "Through field tests and other measures, we confirmed the panel life could extend to more than three years if the handset is treated in common ways," said the spokesperson.

Power is "equivalent to that of an LCD panel, if used in common ways," explained the spokesperson. Since the organic EL panel is self-luminous, consumption power alters depending on the displayed image. Hence the handset has been designed to lower power by changing the display's background color to black or other dark colors while changing letters' color to white, among other technical efforts.

The KDDI spokesperson said the organic EL panel's thickness is "around 1 mm." Compared to 1.3- to 1.4-mm thickness of most LCD panels mounted on current mobile phones, "The organic EL panel made a great contribution to the thin and smart design of the handset as well" (KDDI). However, development of an LCD panel targeting a thickness of less than 1 mm is advancing, so competition is likely to intensify over thickness.

This handset is manufactured by Kyocera Corp. The supplier of the organic EL panel has not been specified. However, some experts suggested the possibility that Kyocera, who develops active matrix panels in house, developed it by their own. Other mobile phones featuring an organic EL panel as the primary display include Finnish Nokia Corp.'s handset embedded with a panel provided by Samsung SDI Co., Ltd. of Korea.

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