Manufacturers of screen devices such as smartphones, monitors and televisions are always experimenting with the next big leap in fidelity and quality. Smartphones, particularly those manufactured by Samsung, have seen the arrival of AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diodes) screens, an improvement over the current standard of OLED screens which offers a fairly impressive degree of image quality. Since this type of display is so attractive, it is understandable to consider using it to make a TV, but unfortunately this technology is not economically feasible for use on such a large scale.
AMOLED displays offer excellent picture quality and lower power consumption, but their particular composition only really works on the comparatively smaller screens of a smartphone. Trying to install one in a television, and especially in a massive 4K screen like you see in a living room these days, would simply be too expensive to build. And given that all OLED offshoots have an inherent vulnerability to burn-in, that wouldn’t last very long either. An overpriced TV with a shorter shelf life than other models carries a “bad idea” all over it. This is why manufacturers are abandoning AMOLED exclusively for smartphones and using other display technologies for their TVs, like QLED, which are better optimized for this purpose.
AMOLED screens are too expensive to expand
AMOLED is an offshoot of standard OLED displays. The basic idea is the same: the screen is made up of a massive amount of microscopic LED lights, allowing it to carefully fine-tune the colors of each pixel on the screen. The difference is that, thanks to the active matrix component, the LEDs of an AMOLED display can light up faster and brighter than usual, giving it a much higher refresh rate, as opposed to the passive matrix of a PMOLED display. An AMOLED display is also thinner, lighter and more flexible than a typical OLED display, making it perfect for integrating into a small device like a smartphone.
Unfortunately, it is very expensive to manufacture. Using it to make a small smartphone screen is really the only way a manufacturer can make a profit unless they charge a prohibitive price for it. Additionally, AMOLED displays share the same weakness as regular OLED displays when enlarged to TV size: burn-in due to degradation of organic components.
Instead, manufacturers are refining their other existing technologies to achieve comparable degrees of image quality in a more affordable package. For example, Samsung, despite being one of the go-to manufacturers of AMOLED smartphone displays, instead chooses to focus on its QLED technology for its TVs, which have several differences from OLED displays. The quantum dots in QLED displays can produce fidelity comparable to AMOLED displays, but on a larger scale and for a longer lifespan, making them better suited to a heavily used display like a TV.
