LG's OLED breakthrough could greatly improve future phones' battery life

LG has made a breakthrough in mobile display tech that could seriously benefit future smartphones. It claims to be the first company to achieve "commercialisation-level" performance in blue phosphorescent OLED panels, leading to the possibility of mass producing them.

This, it says, is a significant step in making a "dream OLED" display – one that achieves phosphorescence for all three primary colours of light: red, green and, now, blue.

A standard OLED panel uses fluorescence light emission for blue reproduction, but achieving the same using phosphorescence can reduce the power consumption needed for the same brightness by three-quarters.

It means the new OLED display – which LG calls Hybrid Tandem OLED – has the potential of offering equal blue light performance but with just 25% of the energy needed.

Combined with the other colours, this results in a panel that needs 15% less power to run overall – thereby offering a significant saving on your phone's battery requirements.

Hybrid Tandem OLED technology could benefit tablets too

As well as phones, LG suggests that its new display technology could benefit tablets too. Even laptops, plus mixed and virtual reality headsets could utilise the new style panels – such as high resolution mini-Hybrid Tandem OLED displays for each eye.

It's not yet clear when the displays will go into mass production, let alone gracing some of the future's best phones, but it LG will show a small-sized panel during SID Display Week in California later this week.

“The successful commercialisation of blue phosphorescence technology, which has been called the final piece of the 'dream OLED' puzzle, will become an innovative milestone towards the next generation of OLED,” said LG Display's CTO, Soo-young Yoon.

"We expect to secure a leading position in the future display market through blue phosphorescence technology."