Apple’s MicroLED Dream: What It Means for Apple Watch and Beyond

Apple is reportedly planning to incorporate MicroLED displays into future Apple Watch models in 2024 or 2025. bloombergThe move would continue Apple’s progress in using its own parts throughout its products, without relying on components from outside suppliers. Just this week, according to another report from Mark Gurman, Apple is currently working on an all-in-one chip that handles Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular networks. The company’s in-house silicon already powers his iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

With all of these efforts, Apple’s ultimate goal is to have greater control over future products while reducing the risk of delays and setbacks beyond the company’s control. For screens in particular, such a change could affect the financial prospects of suppliers such as Samsung Display and LG Display, which provide the majority of Apple’s current panels.

But as it stands, whether you buy an Apple Watch Series 8, Ultra, or SE, already Get a smartwatch with a bright and vibrant display. So it’s worth considering what benefits this next generation of his MicroLED tech might bring to Apple’s wearables (if any) and other devices.

Often hailed as the next big leap in display technology after OLED, MicroLED screens offer many of the same benefits. Images are produced by millions of individual light-emitting diodes that provide pixel-by-pixel dimming. Each can be shut off to produce perfect black. This results in the unparalleled contrast that OLED TVs and smartphones have enjoyed for years. These days, OLEDs are being used more and more in tablets, laptops, and desktop monitors.

But the O in OLED stands for “organic”, and that’s actually one of the downsides. Organic compounds in OLED displays have a limited lifetime, at least Several Potential for permanent burn-in — even if it’s hardly an issue on modern high-end TVs. It falls short of even the best LCD TVs that try to get anywhere near good contrast.

Both Samsung Display and LG Display have made great strides in the last few years with their brighter OLED panels (QD-OLED in Samsung’s case), but MicroLED has no burn-in or panel degradation issues and is even more expensive. We promise brightness. Samsung showed a MicroLED display that reaches a peak brightness of 4,000 nits. That’s about double the current best OLED and LCD TVs.It’s a level of pop that holds up Any environment. Like the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, the Apple Watch Ultra hits 2,000 nits in bright outdoor environments. It’s still bright enough and perfectly visible in sunny conditions, but the MicroLED could improve your game even more.

If there is one company that has led the way with MicroLED so far, it is Samsung. The company provided an update on the situation at CES 2023. If you’re a display geek or tech enthusiast in general, it’s worth watching the video below to understand the benefits of MicroLED, modularity, and how it all fits together. Learn a lot in less than 8 minutes.

In that narration, you hear the following key lines: In other words, like a block, you can freely change the size of the screen to suit your needs. The MicroLEDs are arranged in modules that can be seamlessly combined in any shape or size. In addition to being self-luminous, MicroLEDs independently generate red, green, and blue colors without the need for the same backlighting or color filters as traditional displays. So the display can output perfect colors and improved color brightness. Similar to QD-OLED, its excellent color brightness makes the entire screen appear brighter.

Since MicroLED technology is still very new, it is very expensive for early adopters. Want Samsung’s The Wall in your home? You’re looking at $800,000. Therefore, it is important for both manufacturers and consumers that these displays become popular and reach more products to reduce costs.

not exactly. bloomberg It reports that the MicroLED screen “will be Apple’s first screen designed and developed entirely in-house,” but that doesn’t mean the company will suddenly start manufacturing tens of millions of these panels itself. As in, Apple relies on manufacturing partners to produce whatever is currently in development. The company is “test-manufacturing the screens” at its Santa Clara, Calif. facility, according to the report, but ultimately the task of mass production will fall to a supplier. It’s a way of working together. For example, Apple comes up with designs and specifications for his iPhone panels, which he passes on to Samsung Display and LG Display.

In fact, when I visited LG Display’s suite at CES in Las Vegas last week, the iPhone 14 Pro Max was right in front of me as an example of the company’s OLED manufacturing capabilities. My first thought was “Did Apple approve this?” Secrets and all that. And his second thought to me was, “No one is even shy about this anymore.”

However, because MicroLED is a very new and sophisticated technology, it presents new challenges not present in traditional LCD or OLED panels. Apple has been working on this for a while and apparently the original goal was for him to incorporate his MicroLED screens into Apple products as far back as 2020. bloombergApple originally intended to start with a larger screen as well, but scaled back its ambitions (literally) when it faced technical hurdles. There are so many companies with the means and know-how to produce MicroLED screens on a large scale, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung and LG are involved in the mix somewhere.

Also, MicroLED is not often demonstrated in small form factors like smartwatches. Samsung’s idea to miniaturize this technology is to put it on a TV-sized screen. But it’s unlikely Apple will introduce his MicroLED display until 2024 (or 2025), so there’s plenty of time to get there. According to Display Supply Chain Consultants, wearables and head-mounted displays are projected to eventually become MicroLED’s leading use cases, with revenues for display technology reaching $1.3 billion by 2027. is predicted to reach

This is the most interesting aspect of the whole thing to me.Here are the benefits bloomberg MicroLED brings to Apple Watch:

Compared to the current Apple Watch, the next-generation display is designed to offer brighter, more vibrant colors and easier viewing from an angle. The displays look like content painted on glass, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the project hasn’t been made public yet.

All of these things still apply to today’s current Apple Watch lineup. The display is readable in strong sunlight (as you can see above), and it’s bright and colorful. Also, all of Apple’s OLED panels are glued to the display glass, so you don’t know how close the content is to the surface. may appear. I haven’t heard anyone complaining about poor viewing angles or poor brightness on the recent Apple Watch. But MicroLED’s more efficient screen technology will definitely help push battery life to new heights. very important.

MicroLED’s natural RGB colors can enhance saturation and increase overall color brightness (which increases the perceived brightness of the entire device). Whenever these screens appear on iPhones, iPads, and MacBook Pros, the upgrade becomes much more apparent to our eyes. It’s just a necessary step. And Apple is in a constant quest to become completely self-sufficient.