According to foreign media reports, Apple plans to release the first OLED-equipped iPad next year, and its price will be 60% higher than the current iPad. for $1800. Prior to this, foreign media said that Apple may use a “hybrid (hybrid)” OLED technology in 2024, which can not only reduce production costs, but also make devices thinner and lighter.
This technology combines a rigid OLED glass substrate with a flexible OLED film encapsulation, making OLED panels lighter and thinner than rigid OLED panels. Since it does not require a backlight layer, it is cheaper to produce than flexible OLED panels.
The current high-end iPad Pro 12.9 uses a new type of backlight technology, the mini LED screen. The backlight beads can be made smaller, and can be made into multiple partitions and can be controlled individually. Small gap, so it has a very big advantage over LCD.
Because there are more backlight beads, mini LED has a natural advantage in brightness, and can easily break through the high brightness of 1000nit. This high brightness is still full-screen brightness, not just a local area.
OLEDs with the same specifications can only maintain a few hundred nits when the full screen is lit. It is said that the peak value of OLEDs can reach 1000 nits. In fact, only when a partial area is lit can the brightness be temporarily maintained.
Mini LED is not a perfect technology. Since it does not have the luminous characteristics of a single sub-pixel like an OLED panel, although its brightness is high enough, fonts will still have astigmatism and other phenomena under a pure color background, and the contrast is far from as pure as OLED.
OLED can independently control a single pixel, even in a pure black background, it can make the entire pixel not emit light, and it can be completely black and pure black.
Compared with mini LED technology, the OLED display Apple plans to use will include a two-layer tandem structure with two red, green, and blue emitting layers to increase the brightness of the screen. And the use of low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) thin-film transistors (TFT hybrid), OLED structure (glass substrate + film package) and other new technologies, this plan is also the reason for the price increase. Both LG and Samsung Display are still developing OLED panels for the iPad, and the price of the final panel is still uncertain. OLED screens are also more power-efficient, though, which helps extend battery life.
According to reports, LG is developing OLED hybrid technology panels suitable for 11-inch and 12.9-inch models for Apple’s iPad Pro, while Samsung is developing OLED hybrid technology panels for the iPad Pro 11-inch model.
But in Apple’s latest evaluation, Apple is not satisfied with the performance of OLED screens provided by LG and Samsung. According to the current trend, Apple has begun to research Micro LED by itself. It will be launched on Apple Watch, and it should completely replace mini LED and OLED as the main panel technology.
