Rumor: The Galaxy Note III will use an OLED screen with a plastic substrate; world’s first

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 22 Apr 2013

Those tiny pixels that you stare at all day, they’re “glued” to a sheet of glass. Glass is a fantastic material to work with, but as anyone who has ever dropped a phone can tell you, it’s far too easy to break. Samsung, and several other companies, have been working on ways to make displays that use plastic as a substrate instead of glass. Not only is plastic cheaper to produce, but it’s lighter, and far more durable.

According to the OLED Association, which calls themselves a “forum for the interchange of technical and market information” around OLED technology, Samsung’s upcoming Note III will be announced in September at IFA, and it’ll use one of these newfangled plastic OLED screens. The screen will also be the first FullHD (1080p) OLED panel from Samsung that uses the traditional RGB subpixel configuration instead of PenTile.

Should you believe this rumor? To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I’ve never heard of the OLED Association, but at the same time I don’t want to underestimate Samsung’s expertise in display technology. There’s also a huge difference between showing people you can do something, and then figuring out how to mass produce the prototype that you’ve demoed. Information about Samsung’s production lines isn’t easy to find, so the only thing I can tell you now is to just wait.

The first day of IFA is on September 6th. That’s four and a half months away. Not an insignificant amount of time, but certainly not eternity either.