Apple has been looking to lessen its dependence on Samsung and has LG in its sights as an alternative OLED supplier.
Just days after Bloomberg reported that Apple is looking to commission LG for supplying 2-4 million OLED displays for this year’s iPhones, a new report now claims that the number is higher and that the Cupertino-based tech giant will actually order 3-5 million OLED displays from LG.
Given Apple and Samsung’s age old rivalry, the former has been trying to reduce its dependency on the latter for supplying display panels for iPhones. Last year, Apple reportedly invested $2.7 billion (or 3 trillion Korean Won) in LG Display's organic light-emitting diode (OLED) plant to secure supplies for future iPhones.
LG is also reportedly opening a new OLED plant in China’s Guangzhou district. According to the company, the expanded OLED plant will manufacture 130,000 OLED plates (which will be further divided into display screens), once the Chinese authorities approve the company’s expansion plans.
Last year’s iPhone X sported a Samsung made OLED display and it’s one of the best displays we have seen on a smartphone. In our review of the phone, we noted – “The iPhone X has the best screen of all smartphones today. Not on basis of pixel density or color gamut, or even the brightness levels alone. It's the combination of these factors, alongside Apple's high-quality standards for OLED panels that makes the iPhone X's OLED display visibly better than the rest in all departments.”
As far as LG’s displays are concerned, we saw a pOLED display made by the company on the Pixel 2 XL, Google’s flagship smartphone for 2017. pOLED displays use plastic instead of glass (used in most OLEDs) for the layer base. LG’s display performed pretty poorly on the Pixel 2 XL and at launch the device had some major issues including – screen burn-in, colour space problems and more. Google had to issue several software updates to fix these issues on the phone.
However, LG is known to make beautiful OLED panels for its televisions. Last year’s LG C7 OLED was one of the most gorgeous TVs we reviewed. In our review, we noted that image quality on the TV is absolutely gorgeous, colours are well defined and punchy, and things look even better with HDR content.We hope to see the same quality OLED displays on the 2018 iPhones.
Apple is expected to launch three new iPhones this year, of which two are expected to feature OLED displays, while a cheaper iPhone with an LCD display is also expected.
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