
Next-Gen Display: MicroLEDs - rbanffy
https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/coming-soon-to-a-wrist-near-you-microled-displays
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cronjobma
There was a time where I’d get super hyped when reading these kinds of
promises. Transparent displays, foldable screens. Truth is, we’ve been seeing
working prototypes at events like CES for more than 15 years. I’ve come to
realize the mechanics of these companies are similar to the car industry. New
technologies are presented for the same reason car companies present strange
concept cars: PR

~~~
derefr
The weird thing is that we already have “foldable screens.” But all the phone
makers have done with them is to give us slightly less bezel on our glass
rectangles.

I’m wondering if this is a “flying car” thing—if actually handing consumers
ultra-thin bendable (but not actually _creasable_ ) panels would be a dumb
idea, because consumers would try to exceed their tolerances and break them
too easily.

(This is also, I think, why we don’t see more optical cabling standards
outside of the enterprise space. The average consumer can’t be trusted to
install a glass-fibre cable run without breaking it; and when they break it,
they’ll get angry, because glass-fibre cables still cost a lot of money. And
plastic-fibre cabling, though more tolerant, is far less of an improvement
over copper, especially in attenuation distance.)

~~~
ccajas
>The weird thing is that we already have “foldable screens.” But all the phone
makers have done with them is to give us slightly less bezel on our glass
rectangles.

Also, aren't they used for curved TV screens and computer monitors?

~~~
ttflee
Sure, these displays are bendable. But they have a zero Gaussian curvature
everywhere. What would be really interesting is to build a flat panel display
that has a non-zero Gaussian curvature at will, e.g. one that fits into the
windshield of a car.

There is a catch that programming these displays require one to learn
differential geometry as a prerequisite.

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xt00
I hope they start with small array counts and build up from there.. you can
imagine them having a "super bright super low power small display with 200x400
pixels" actually being useful in plenty of places.. then build up from there
step by step.. So if AR is that application then, great. But don't try to jump
from barely manufacturable to 4k2k VR display as your first step.. sort of
like Lytro -- they just were like, "yea we just need to be able to make the
densest highest quality and highest lens count micro lens array in the world
to be successful!" My advice to the microLED people.. start small.. no pun
intended, but yea.. don't try to hit a grand slam on day 1.

~~~
CharlesW
> _My advice to the microLED people.. start small.._

To your point, reports are that Apple is starting with Apple Watch.

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vanderZwan
I'm actually most excited by the transparency. If we get low-cost transparent
displays, it will finally make finally make Ishii's clearboard an affordable
possibility for remote collaboration.

[http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/clearboard/](http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/clearboard/)

~~~
gt_
What am I missing? Couldn’t we just drag a low-opacity video player over an
instance of Photoshop for the same effect?

~~~
vanderZwan
The camera has to be behind the screen and pointing through it

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derefr
From a bit of googling just now, it seems that LEDs are effectively “two-way”
devices: they emit light, but they can also _sense_ light—just like the way
that any loudspeaker is also fundamentally a microphone.

Which leads me to wonder: would a microLED array make a better camera input
than current CCDs?

~~~
ghobs91
If so, this could allow front facing cameras and webcams to be placed dead
center of the screen, allowing 0 bezels without awkward camera placement like
Dell XPS has.

~~~
p1esk
The entire screen would have to serve as a sensor, the pictures will have the
same resolution as the screen.

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tobr
I’m guessing that “photo” is in fact a mock-up? Because it appears to show a
screen that is able to occlude the background with both light and dark colors,
which is not consistent with the description of the technology.

~~~
rebuilder
A reverse image search turns up what appears to be the photo used as the
background for the picture in the article, so yes, it seems to be a mockup.

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flyinfungi
What is a reasonable time to see this in my next phone? 2020? Looks really
cool, with the screen being the biggest battery hog I hope to see a bump in
battery lasting through the day (otherwise we get thinner phones).

~~~
hristov
It won't be on your phone by 2020. It is not clear whether it will ever be on
your phone. The iphone 8 has about 3 million subpixels which will all have to
be individually cut, tested and assembled on a display for a microled to work.

Or, alternatively, the display can be made from a whole wafer, which will cost
about a thousand dollars for the raw materials and perhaps $5k for the
finished display.

I know technology tends to advance a lot, but the advances required for
microled to work seem really far fetched. Also, display technology does not
advance as quickly as digital computation technology. Remember we have been
talking about OLEDs for at least 20 years now and they are only now becoming
mainstream.

This technology, if it ever works, will be for very small devices where
brightness is very important but resolution is not that important. So smart
glasses and smart watches. Even for those applications it is not at all
certain that they will be able to bring the cost down sufficiently.

~~~
6d6b73
It already works:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/01/11/samsungs-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/01/11/samsungs-
micro-led-tv-first-impressions-146-inches-of-magnificent-
weirdness/#14c361e07866)

~~~
abritinthebay
At 146 inches of screen. With very visible pixels when up close.

Now get that to 300-400 dpi in the palm of your hand. That's the issue with
getting it "working" in a phone. Quite different.

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utopcell
I'm not sure I see the "revolutionary" aspect of this. With displays, you
don't need to make power consumption arbitrarily small. By Amdahl's law, you
only need to make it a small percentage of the cpu (and wireless) consumption.
In this respect, Sharp's transflective displays (that were found, for example,
in the pebble watches,) were already resolving the power issue in the context
of smartwatches.

~~~
djrogers
The revolution is in the amount of time the display can be on, and the amount
of data it can display 24/7\. That is currently the big knock on most
smartwatches - you have to move your wrist to activate the display and see the
time. If that barrier is removed, it is revolutionary.

~~~
mikestew
"Most smartwatches"? I can think of only one, and that's the primary reason I
have a Garmin instead of an Apple Watch. Other than Apple, I can't think of
another smart watch that requires one to make a wrist motion in order for the
time to be displayed.

~~~
brokenmachine
My original Samsung Galaxy Gear (that I used literally once, lol) had this
"feature". You had to do a douchey motion to see the time, and it often missed
your motion so you'd have to do it again.

I knew I'd never actually use it but was hoping it'd be relatively hackable
and I'd think of a use case for it. That never eventuated.

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ableal
A phrase in the article made me look up the price of raw silicon wafers, but
although there are articles mentioning scarcity and 20% price hikes in 2017
(e.g. [https://semiengineering.com/silicon-wafers-ma-and-price-
hike...](https://semiengineering.com/silicon-wafers-ma-and-price-hikes/) ),
they are rather coy about actual values.

Anyone has a ballpark figure for Si wafers? All I found quickly was a chart
image mentioning around 3k USD ( [http://semimd.com/blog/2014/05/16/st-
licenses-28nm-fd-soi-to...](http://semimd.com/blog/2014/05/16/st-
licenses-28nm-fd-soi-to-samsung/) )

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eat_veggies
The transparency aspect is so cool! They look like they'd be awesome for AR
goggles, although I don't know enough about the optics to know if that'd be
feasible. We may also be close to getting those Star Trek style clear
displays! Exciting stuff.

~~~
leggomylibro
I was actually wondering recently if you could do something like that with a
small off-the-shelf TFT screen.

ILI9341 modules are less than $5 each, and have 16/18-bit color with typical
resolutions of 240x320. You can separate the actual panel from its backlights
and casing without damaging it if you're careful, so I was thinking of trying
to maybe put one in a box for a sort of DIY projector or something.

But I'm also pretty sure there's some reason why it won't work; maybe the
glass is too polarized, maybe the colors are too dim, etc.

~~~
vanderZwan
People have been modding old overhead projectors with LCD screens for as long
as universities have been throwing both away (so since early 2000s). Here is a
recent example[0]. For some reason nobody seems to realise that you can just
place a smarphone underneath it and use that. I mean, the principle is the
same as this video[1] :P

I just got myself an abandoned one - the Karolinska Institute, where I work,
is moving, and they are throwing away a lot of crap. I took one of the
overhead projectors, stripped out the old 240 Watts lamp + cooling unit (to be
replaced with a less energy-draining yet brighter LED panel from the inside.
Perhaps even one of those that can be programmed to change colors).

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXX2UkucO8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXX2UkucO8w)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKL9_bdtHq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKL9_bdtHq0)

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dev_throw
> The second approach to microLED displays seems absurd on the face of it, yet
> it has the potential to work in smart-watch screens and larger displays. It
> involves dicing up wafers into individual microLEDs, making sure they’re all
> working perfectly, and transferring each one to its proper place on the
> display (not necessarily in that order). A 42-mm Apple Watch has roughly
> 120,000 pixels, each one of three colors, so that might mean some 360,000
> microLEDs. “You need a technology that can transfer 30,000 LEDs per second
> for a consumer application,” says Virey.

Not sure if I understand this correctly, do they mean moving micro-LEDs during
the manufacturing process, or when the device is being used? If it is the
latter, it seems ridiculously cool!

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tunesmith
I wonder how much this would increase the battery life of an Apple Watch?

~~~
wrycoder
Dream on, they’ll make it thinner

~~~
pilif
They might. But over the last 3 generations they made them thicker and about
tripled the battery life.

~~~
abritinthebay
If I remember rightly the thickness increase was mostly the _sensors_ too.

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andmarios
Samsung has already demonstrated a MicroLED TV, LG is also on the wagon, yet
the article fails to mention at all any of these big display companies and
keeps going on about Apple and how it competes with Google and a few startups
in the space.

Disappointed that this article has IEEE's brand.

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ggm
if google glasses launched _after_ this technology was ubiquitous...

