Domestic manufacturers break through the problem of RGB OLED display!

In the past few years, smartphone screen technology has developed rapidly, evolving from 60Hz refresh rate to 1-120Hz adaptive high brush, from 1080P to 2K resolution, from ordinary PWM dimming to high-frequency PWM, and the display experience has been continuously optimized. However, there is still one major problem in screen technology that has not yet been solved - the RGB sub-pixel arrangement.

Although OLED screens have bright colors, high contrast and bendability, which provide the possibility for innovative forms such as folding screens and scrolling screens, they are limited by the uneven life of sub-pixels, and the attenuation speed of blue sub-pixels is much faster than that of red and green sub-pixels, resulting in frequent problems of screen aging and color shift. In the past, manufacturers used PenTile arrangement to try to alleviate the problem of short blue lifespan, but the side effect was that the clarity was reduced and the UI text was blurred, which affected the user experience.

In 2025, Real RGB OLED will usher in the landing. With a full RGB sub-pixel arrangement, the loss of sharpness caused by the PenTile structure is eliminated, resulting in clearer text and more accurate colors, while hopefully optimizing screen life. Lei Technology believes that the breakthrough of OLED display effect is likely to bring the picture quality of mobile phone screens to a new level.

What is Real RGB?

The biggest feature of OLED is that the sub-pixel is self-luminous, and each sub-pixel contains red, green, and blue, which are the standard RGB primary colors. As mentioned above, since the life span of blue and red subpixel materials is shorter than that of green subpixel, manufacturers need to arrange them differently to make the color reproduction accurate.

In order to solve the problem of longevity and color accuracy, Samsung developed the PenTile arrangement method in the early stage, that is, the red and blue sub-pixels are cut in half, and the green sub-pixels are completely retained, so as to achieve the effect of color and life balance. Similarly, RGB Delta arrangement, pearl arrangement, and diamond arrangement basically follow a similar logic, by changing the shape of the subpixel to align the lifetime and color of the entire sub-pixel.

(图源：Pently Apple)

These arrangements do increase the life of the OLED and improve the color performance, but because the subpixel area is reduced, the actual pixel density is greatly reduced at the same resolution. For example, in the RGB Delta arrangement, the actual resolution is equivalent to about 77% of the LCD panel with the same resolution.

Of course, in the past few years, panel manufacturers have also reduced the problem of special arrangement and reduced clarity through different schemes, such as Tianma designed a special sub-pixel rendering algorithm in its windmill pixel arrangement scheme to improve the sharpness of font edges.

Although most panel manufacturers currently provide specialized algorithms to improve clarity, this is still a challenge for mobile phone manufacturers. Therefore, the long-dormant Real RGB OLED has returned to people's attention again. Real RGB OLED isn't a recent technology and was already in the thick of Samsung's PenTile arrangement, but Real RGB OLED requires patterning evaporation using a sophisticated metal mask to precisely deposit red, green, and blue light-emitting materials on the substrate.

(图源：OLED Info)

Real RGB OLED's early processing process was complex, costly, and low-success, and more importantly, the technology had a higher failure rate when processing high-pixel density products, which was undoubtedly a thankless task for mobile phone manufacturers to chase this technology. However, at the end of 2023, Visionox developed ViP (Visionox In-Pixel) technology, which produces RGB sub-pixels through the lithography process to form an independent sub-pixel structure, and the electroluminescent device structure of each sub-pixel can be designed and adjusted independently, thus breaking through the previous limitations.

On large-size panels, CSOT also demonstrated the possibility of printing OLED technology to achieve Real RGB OLED panels, which will further promote the standard RGB arrangement of OLED panel display products to the mainstream.

What does Real RGB bring to OLED?

So what advancements can Real RGB OLED bring?

On the one hand, Real RGB OLED can reduce the pixel density loss of traditional OLED panels, making them as clear as possible with the same resolution as LCD. This allows the phone to achieve a sharper and clearer effect when processing text edges, and at the same time, it can also reduce the problem of screen ghosting and improve the overall comfort of use.

When pixel density is no longer bothered by loss, the problem of power consumption at high resolutions will also be solved.

On the other hand, the life of the blue sub-pixel after the optimization of Real RGB OLED will also be improved, and the problem of screen burn-in that often occurs in OLED panels can be alleviated. This means that mobile phones equipped with Real RGB OLED panels can have more interactive designs with always-on screens, and mobile phone manufacturers do not need to worry too much about these functions causing screen burn-in acceleration.

(Source: BOE)

On the whole, after the mass production of this technology, it can indeed bring a lot of improvement to the display effect of mobile phones. But for now, the cost of Real RGB OLED is not too cheap, and according to the news of the digital chatting station, Real RGB OLED may only exist in highly customized projects for the time being, and it will take some time to be widely used in mainstream models.

Mobile phone screen unwinding "clarity"

In recent years, with the application of dynamic refresh rate and eye protection technology, OLED has gradually been widely accepted by consumers. Lei Technology has also done a simple market research before, and in 2024, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers have almost completely abandoned LCD panels, even if the price starts at 499 yuanREDMI 14C, it also has an OLED screen that supports 120Hz refresh rate.

After solving the problem of insufficient eye protection, the OLED panel completely defeated the LCD panel and there was only one kilometer left: clarity.

Earlier we mentioned Real RGB OLED, a new technology for OLED panels, but in 2025, there is more than one way to roll up the definition. Digital Chat revealed that Samsung's LIPO COE OLED technology is about to be commercialized, and there may be models equipped with this technology on the market soon. This year, Real RGB OLED and LIPO COE OLED may form two directions of mobile phone display, although they are also roll definition, but they are a little different.

(Source: Samsung)

The core of LIPO COE OLED is on the "COE", which stands for Color on Encapsulation. This technology is designed to replace traditional polarizers by adding color filters and black matrices to the package layer to improve the light transmittance and brightness of the screen while reducing power consumption.

Polarizers play a role in OLED panels to absorb part of the external light and reduce reflections, thereby improving darkfield performance, making blacks purer and improving screen contrast. Although polarizers can help the panel improve the dark field performance, it will also absorb about 40% of the sub-pixel self-emitting light, thereby reducing the brightness of the screen itself. This can also easily cause the screen of some models to look less "transparent".

The LIPO COE OLED technology replaces the position of the original polarizer through black electrodes or optical interference layers, so that it can effectively absorb external light and improve contrast without polarizers.

To put it simply, Real RGB OLED focuses on improving the accuracy and color performance of pixel arrangement, while Samsung's LIPO COE OLED focuses on improving the structural and optical performance of the display to improve contrast and brightness.

(Source: Samsung)

It is not difficult to see that Real RGB OLED and LIPO COE OLED are two different technologies, but they have the same goal.

The development direction of these two technologies marks that the mobile phone display industry has entered the era of "fineness + long battery life" from a single "high-resolution competition" to a dual-track parallel, and in the future, 1.5K, 2K These resolution parameters may be gradually ignored, and pixel density has become the focus of more attention of consumers. For flagship and foldable models, Real RGB OLED provides unparalleled refinement, greatly optimizing the experience of mobile phone photography, screen reading, and video playback. For a wider range of high-end models, the high brightness and low power consumption brought by LIPO COE OLED will become an important selling point for mobile phone manufacturers, especially in markets that emphasize outdoor use scenarios, such as folding screens, gaming phones, and ultra-large screen devices.

At a deeper level, this trend also indicates that the differentiated competition in the mobile phone market is accelerating. In the past few years, the screen upgrades of flagship phones have mostly been small steps, such as higher refresh rates, higher PPI, and stronger HDR, but these upgrades tend to be the same direction across the industry, while Real RGB OLED and LIPO COE OLED represent two different routes.

(图源：9to5google)

This may mean that in the future, flagship phones of different brands will begin to be customized and optimized for different user needs. For example, imaging flagships may prefer Real RGB OLED because it can bring more detailed screen displays, while folding and long-life flagships may prefer LIPO COE OLED because it can bring better brightness and lower power consumption.

As consumers, this technological differentiation means that we may need to weigh our needs more carefully than ever before when choosing a flagship phone. In 2025, the screen of flagship mobile phones will no longer be "the more high-end the more versatile", but will begin to evolve to "optimization in different directions". We're likely to see some brands go to the extreme in clarity while others focus on power optimization and outdoor readability, a trend that will make the future flagship phone market more diverse, rather than a race for a single metric.

Source: Ray Technology