From Apple Watch to iPhone – powerful OLED technology can be transferred to your smartphone | news

The Apple Watch display received some attention at Apple's September 2024 keynote. The OLED display shines up to 40 percent brighter, especially at suboptimal viewing angles. So if you look at the smartwatch from an angle, you will see more than previous generations. In the energy-saving always-on mode, the second hand should also be visible (but so far only on the Change, Reflections and Digital Activity dials). To achieve this, Apple relies on a new type of OLED structure. According to a report by Korean news portal The Elec, Apple is also planning to use this technology Future iPhones To use.

The report explains that the innovation essentially consists of mounting silicon crystals in up to eight layers of thin-film transistors (TFTs). By default, manufacturers use low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS). Innovations in recent years have included adding oxides to LTPS crystals. This modified substrate, abbreviated LTPO, differs from native LTPS in that it consumes much less energy – at the expense of electron movement. At lower refresh rates, LTPO TFTs are significantly more power efficient.

LTPO is at the lowest level
Previously, LTPO was only used for one or two of the top TFT layers (converting TFTs). Since the Apple Watch 4, for example, oxide has been added to one TFT layer (Apple calls this LTPO1). The Apple Watch Ultra uses two LTPO TFTs. The Apple Watch 10 LTPO's OLED display uses for the first time the lowest TFT layer directly above the OLED layer — so-called driver TFTs — in addition to the two TFT transformer layers that already exist.

More independent and always dynamic viewing angle?
If the achievements of the latest generation Apple Watch can be transferred to much larger iPhone displays, it will mean a noticeably brighter image – in situations where the smartphone is not aligned at the optimal angle to the face. The always-on, energy-efficient display can also be refreshed frequently without straining the battery. If Apple dares to refresh the Apple Watch 10's screen every second, the iPhone's larger battery should be able to handle it.