We’ve had only tantalizingly brief (or is it briefly tantalizing?) chances to see LG’s glorious OLED television , but each and every time it’s left us with the feeling that our lives are poorer for not having one in our homes. Sure, that says as much about our tech addiction as it does about the 3mm-thick displays, but at least the deep-pocketed among us won’t have to wait too much longer to sate the need for 10,000,000:1 contrast ratios and 0.001ms response times. LG has announced it’ll be bringing it’s 15-inch OLED panel to Europe this May (to be swiftly followed by summer availability in the US) with a hefty MSRP sticker of €1,999 ($2,725) for the Austrian market. Nobody ever said the cutting edge was gonna be a cheap place to live. LG’s 15-inch 15EL9500 OLED TV sets sail for Europe, scheduled to arrive this May originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:06:00 EST.

Hey magpie-eyes, instead of saving up for a 3D TV why don’t you cash in your prized teaspoon collection and spunk $16,000 down on a square meter of Philips’ Mirrorwall, which uses dozens of OLED panels to reflect motion. Some may say it’s just a fancy mirror, and while they’re kinda right, does your mirror have hundreds of OLED screens and a camera glued to it to detect motion and reflect it right back at you? No? Philips is offering up the custom installation at €10k - 12k per square meter (around $13.5k - $16k) or will rent out the full Mirrrorwall for €10,000 a week, but you’ve got to fork out extra for the delivery, installation and insurance of the glorified vanity screen. Check out the video below for the Mirrorwall in action, and if you still want it (and don’t own a club, bar, or reputable excuse for owning one), then please seek help. [ OLED-Info via TechRadar ]

If Nexus One reviewers could agree on one thing, it was that the phone has a stunning screen. But for those inky blacks and vivid colors, you’re apparently paying a hefty price: I mean, look at that. DisplayMate ran a battery of comparative tests on the Nexus One’s AMOLED screen, and came away with a damning list of issues: • The Nexus One only uses 16 bit color, which means that “Red and Blue only have 32 possible intensity levels and Green only has 64 possible intensity levels,” as compared to the iPhone and others, which have at least 256 intensity levels for each color. Result : That horrible banding you see above. • Android’s sub-pixel rendering is great for icons and text, but terrible for images. Photos are “rendered poorly and inaccurately, with over-saturated colors, bad color and gray-scale accuracy, large color and gray-scale tracking errors, calibration errors, lots of image noise from excessive edge and sharpness processing, and many artifacts.” Result : Blown-out areas in photographs, image noise, and general gaudiness in colorful images.

If Nexus One reviewers could agree on one thing, it was that the phone has a stunning screen. But for those inky blacks and vivid colors, you’re apparently paying a hefty price: I mean, look at that. DisplayMate ran a battery of comparative tests on the Nexus One’s AMOLED screen, and came away with a damning list of issues: • The Nexus One only uses 16 bit color, which means that “Red and Blue only have 32 possible intensity levels and Green only has 64 possible intensity levels,” as compared to the iPhone and others, which have at least 256 intensity levels for each color. Result : That horrible banding you see above. • Android’s sub-pixel rendering is great for icons and text, but terrible for images

Whatever happens in Japan is usually replicated across the world a few years later, so while LG , Mitsubishi and co are busy readying OLED TVs, Sony’s pulling out of OLED production in Japan. They’ll still continue selling OLED TVs internationally, but won’t pursue the Japanese market anymore, due to slow sales. Their XEL-1 was the first to hit the market, just two years ago, and sells for 200,000 Yen ($2,222) in Japan—all 11-inches of it. No wonder they didn’t catch on. If you were considering a super-slim, super-expensive set this year, then LG’s expected to release a 15-inch model in the States this year—though with the death knell being sounded proceed at your own caution. [ Reuters ]

The world’s largest production OLED TV is headed Stateside later this year, said LG reps at the ISE-2010 LG Electronics show this week. LG is aiming for mid-2010, with an expected stratospheric $2,500 price tag. Presumably, given what LG has said on the subject , the 15-inch EL9500 would be a precursor to the 19- and 20-inch OLEDs they alluded to on February 1. In any event, these gorgeous, petite TVs are on track for later this year, with a 40-inch unaffordable-for-the-common-man version arriving in 2012 .

Along with affordable solid state drives , OLED panels are among the most universally desired bits of tech today. It’s therefore a good idea to prick up our ears and listen when new California startup Kateeva promises to make OLEDs bigger and cheaper with its large-area printing technology. Advised by our old friend Vladimir Bulovic of MIT , the company has gone official with word of its prototype OLED printer, which can produce displays on a scale of 1.8 by 1.5 meters (about six by five feet) at a cost roughly equal to 60 percent of the manufacturing costs of current LCD technology. We say can , what we really mean is that it has shown itself capable of achieving those numbers — it’s still in the prototype stage and won’t be sent out to display manufacturers for testing until next year but it’s something to look forward to, nonetheless.

Remember Samsung’s new 3.3-inch AMOLED with embedded touch-controls? If not then you’d better go back and brush up on your display tech because the first Samsung phone using the new 800 x 480 pixel “Super AMOLED” display is said to be getting a reveal next week at the big Mobile World Congress show. The panel is said to be five times “clearer” and offer 20% better visibility when used outside — the biggest weakness of existing AMOLED devices like the Zune HD and Nexus One. We’re also going to guess that the new device will be running Samsung’s new Bada OS at the time of the reveal — but that’s not exactly a stretch . Samsung’s first ‘Super AMOLED’ phone to debut next week? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:25:00 EST

It appears to be graphene day. First, IBM was using the material to shame silicon into submission , and now Swedish scientists say graphene could one day make lamps and other traditional lighting elements unnecessary. If the Swedes are right, then future homes and buildings could be adorned with graphene panels, called light emitting electromechanical cells (LECs, for short). The LEC panels can be fashioned so they cover an entire ceiling, wall, or whatever, and they’re completely adjustable. Dim your walls and ceiling for a romantic evening with the female characters of Mass Effect 2 , for example

The first installment of Google’s fancy Nexus One design series focused on the sound quality of the device, and on the overall design. Well, part two is here now, and this time, we get to watch while HTC project manager Tomasz Hasinki and Android software engineer Romain Guy give us the goods on the Nexus One ’s OLED display and the interactive, 3D framework. We’re expecting a couple more videos in the series, so grab a very tiny bowl of popcorn (it’s pretty short) and check out the video, which is after the break. Continue reading Nexus One video series, part two: Google schools us on OLED displays Nexus One video series, part two: Google schools us on OLED displays originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:16:00 EST.