Transparent OLED Screen; Yummy

The once hot display technology of OLED seems to have died down a little bit at this year’s CES. While there were still small instances of the OLED from the usual suspects, the trumpeting of the technology for common television viewing was absent.

In its place, however, were more interesting and alternative uses for the OLED. Sony showed a flexible OLED display that could be worked into things such as a folding laptop screen or a bracelet.

Another OLED use that caught our eye was the transparent AMOLED, which could prove one day be used for high-resolution, full color heads-up displays. See the image below for what we saw.

Will OLED eventually become just the main technology for our HDTVs and computer displays, or will it be for special use devices such as the one above? Discuss!

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • Amazing!
    Oled... Transparent!
    The good is probably for store owners playing back commercials on their store windows.
    The bad is,you can't really use this technology on a laptop if you want some form of privacy...
    You could have a flexible plastic or intransparent silicon based flap on the back, foldable like a sunscreen on a window; but then you won't benefit over a regular screen which costs less.

    The good would probably be (I presume) if on the back one could install a mirror;directly on the screen, without glass subtract between.
    Then perhaps one can create some sort of solar reflective screen if possible.
    Works with regular TFT,so I hope some of this technology can be used to create those semi-reflective screens (no need for backlight).
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  • afrobacon
    I can already see people attaching these to their windshield...
    Reply
  • dyingcat
    Where do they put the circuits controlling the pixels?
    If they can make the panel really transparent, we can stack the panels and make a 3D display eh?
    Reply
  • the last resort
    a resolution of 320x240? i think ill wait for a slightly higher resolution than that.
    Reply
  • ricardok
    Other than using that on cars (like afrobacon pointed out - it should be bendable also), I really don't see the use of those other than some fancy commercials on a store window or a pretty nice bracelet/3G phone/clock (all in one).. Do you guys remember a nokia commercial 'testing' this kind of phone?
    Reply
  • kewl munky
    We are so close to having a real life master chief! Now we just need to invent MJOLNIR armor, inject someone's bones with titanium, kidnap children at 6 and clone them to train them for battle, and all the um, easy stuff :D
    Reply
  • Trialsking
    You guys are missing the obvious. Monitor in your glasses. You know like in all the future movies, or like the guy on the cover of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 and 2. You set the aimbot to target all the hot chicks and you wouldn't have to move your head!
    Reply
  • Caffeinecarl
    I was thinking what dyingcat was thinking... wouldn't this be an easy method of creating 3D displays? This would certainly be a great technology, but I just don't know what it would be used for off hand...
    Reply
  • OLED clothing that mirrors the surroundings gets the fast track development.



    Reply
  • stealth91
    i have seen this done before using a normal LCD screen monitor.
    Reply