Samsung in its native Korea revealed today that it should soon mass-produce the first active matrix OLED screen with its touch functions built-in. Instead of having to place a second touch input layer on top of the screen, the new method adds sensors on each of the organic cells. The touch adds just a thousandth of a millimeter to the thickness and consequently doesn’t dim or soften the image as would a separate pane.
AMOLED is an improvement on the regular, passive OLED format that changes each pixel directly and is more power-efficient than its predecessor. Both don’t need a backlight and are not only thinner but produce much deeper contrast ratios than most LCDs.
The first examples are 3.3-inch, 800×480 screens ideally suited to smartphones and which should reach the full production stage by March. Samsung doesn’t expect to limit its output to this size and hopes to "expand the display market" with its new technique
