One of the most exciting technologies in the world of television is blue phosphor OLED technology, or blue PHOLED for short. As we reported earlier this month, PHOLED is more efficient and provides much more brightness without also requiring more power. It's used in the red and green pixels of OLED TVs, but blue has eluded us until recently. However, even now it's proving tricky to manufacture, and that means the next big thing in TV technology has taken a little longer than expected to become a commercial reality.
That means the latest news from LG Display is exciting: The company says it has created a new OLED panel based on the blue “dream OLED material,” as LG describes it (via translation). As ETNews reported, LG Display has “successfully developed a blue phosphorescence-based OLED panel.” The panel is apparently a dual-stack tandem OLED, and will have similar longevity to existing OLEDs.
That's the good news, but the details suggest it'll still be some time before we see this technology on our screens. Previous reports suggested PHOLED wouldn't be ready for the masses until at least 2025, and this announcement doesn't indicate a shorter timeframe, but instead suggests it could be even longer for TVs.
Why we're holding back our enthusiasm for PHOLED TVs
The keywords in LG's story are “tandem OLED.” Typically, OLED displays have just one light-emitting layer; in dual-layer tandem OLEDs, there are two, one stacked on top of the other.
Apple is using tandem OLED technology in its iPad Pro (2024), and that underscores the problem with tandem OLED technology: it’s very expensive. That means it’s so far been limited to use in smaller electronics and automotive head-up displays, where its longevity and resistance to screen burn-in make it worth paying extra for.
The problem is that when you want to scale up, the complexity and cost also increase dramatically. And that means tandem OLED technology is in the same position as other new TV technologies were when they were first developed: it’s very difficult to do at scale, and it costs a fortune to do so. In the short term, that means it will be in relatively few devices: for example, Samsung intends to use the technology in its mobile phones as an upgrade to AMOLED technology, especially in foldable phones, but it hasn’t announced any plans to incorporate it into the best OLED TVs.
LG is using the PHOLED material developed by Universal Display, which is the key company behind the technology, and using a tandem system sounds like a compromise: while Universal Display's goal is to have blue PHOLEDs on the same panels as the green and red ones it already produces, it announced earlier this year that while “Phosphorescent blue is coming [we] We need some more time before its commercial introduction.”
So this is good news for the displays on the best phones and tablets, but it will actually have a minor impact on them anyway, because small screens can already get very bright. The best TVs will benefit the most from this, so we'll have to wait and see when this technology will reach them – at this rate, it looks like 2026.
