OLED vs AMOLED

[mkU1tra762]

So I kind of understand the difference. From what I know OLED is a organic film that emits light when a current passes through it. AMOLED has something to do with a TFT layer. Can anyone help explain this further?

[The Sloth]

OLED- organic light emitting diode

AM(Active Matrix)"OLED"- mostly samsung OLED  

[Orangeator]

Just now, nerdslayer1 said:

OLED- organic light emitting diode

AMOLED- samsung OLED  

Pretty much. I am pretty sure my Motorola phone had an AMOLED display. The blacks were really black.

[The Sloth]

11 minutes ago, Orangeator said:

Pretty much. I am pretty sure my Motorola phone had an AMOLED display. The blacks were really black.

..i meant it as Samsung manufactures them. 

[Sakkura]

AMOLED is a subtype of OLED.

 

TFT is currently used for most OLED displays, as well as LCD displays.

 

Basically the TFT layer makes it easier to control a high-resolution display in general, doesn't really matter whether it's OLED or LCD.

 

2 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

..i meant it as Samsung manufactures them. 

AUO does a bit of AMOLED work too. But yeah Samsung dominates that market.

[Mira Yurizaki]

The AM in AMOLED stands for "Active Matrix", much like how  there's an active matrix LCD. It's also a generic term, it's not specific to Samsung or anything.

[Glenwing]

8 hours ago, MattKnutson84 said:

So I kind of understand the difference. From what I know OLED is a organic film that emits light when a current passes through it. AMOLED has something to do with a TFT layer. Can anyone help explain this further?

 

On 8/18/2015 at 6:09 PM, Glenwing said:

What’s the difference between AMOLED and OLED?

 

Nothing. AMOLED is a redundant and unnecessary term in the computer technology industry, don’t use it. Just call it OLED.

Technically speaking, “OLED” is a more general term; OLED is actually quite a broad technology, it isn’t just used for display panels. It’s being explored for use in applications even as simple as regular interior lighting.

However, AMOLED is the only type of OLED which is suitable for use in computer-grade displays. So when someone uses the term “OLED” in the context of phones, TVs, monitors, etc. (which is 99% of cases) it’s already implied that you’re talking about AMOLED since there’s no other type it could be.

Saying “AMOLED” every time in a conversation about phones is like talking about how your swimming pool isn't just any kind of swimming pool, it's a liquid water swimming pool!. It's not... incorrect, but it does make it sound like you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

The only reason the term AMOLED is used by Samsung is for marketing purposes. If you actually know what it means (what it actually means, not just what the letters stand for), you realize that it really is pointless to go out of your way to specify that it's Active Matrix OLED; what, as opposed to some other type of OLED? There aren't any other types of OLED used for this application, and to insist on specifying that your OLED displays are active-matrix OLED is about as silly as saying "check out our new line of electricity-operated laptops". It's downright silly to specify these things; they wouldn't be any other way.

 

Technical Stuff:

 

(Note: When I say “computer display” here, I am using it as a broad term which refers to the displays used in smartphones, tablets, laptops, TVs, monitors, etc.)

The AM stands for “Active-Matrix”. This is actually a type of addressing scheme, not really a type of OLED itself, I only used that wording above for simplicity.

An addressing scheme is the plan for a display panel's internal wiring and how the electronic control signals will actually be delivered to every pixel on the display. Since most displays have at least several million pixels, wiring each one to the display controller individually (a scheme called "direct-driven") isn't really feasible. All complex LCD and OLED panels in computer displays use the Active-Matrix TFT addressing scheme.

LCDs and OLED displays refresh one row at a time, moving from top to bottom. As soon as the display moves on to the next line, voltage is no longer being delivered to the previous line. Without voltage constantly applied, LCD subpixels will drift back to the "off" position and OLEDs will fade to black. “Active-Matrix” means that each subpixel has a capacitor which is charged when that subpixel is refreshed, and maintains the state of that subpixel while the display controller moves on to the other rows. Without these capacitors, each row would fade as soon as the display controller moved on, resulting in a mostly-black screen and a moving scanline, very similar to a CRT.

With a passive-matrix display (no capacitors), you need to deliver higher voltage to the pixels than with an active-matrix display to achieve the same level of brightness. Since the pixels fade away immediately they need to shine extra bright for a short time, while the pixels on an active-matrix display can be dimmer and just stay active for a longer period of time to output the same total amount of light. The largest disadvantage of OLEDs is their limited lifespan, and higher voltages make them degrade even more quickly, so for OLED displays in particular no sane engineer would ever design an OLED display as anything other than Active-Matrix unless it was intended to be disposable or otherwise have a very short or very light-usage service life.

So, “AMOLED” is a completely redundant term. All OLED displays in computer technology are Active-Matrix; that’s a given.