Apple could pick Samsung’s foldable display tech for its cheap Vision Pro headset | Infinium-tech

Apple is still trying to find the best recipe for an affordable Apple Vision Pro and it’s given itself plenty of time to do so – the headset has reportedly been delayed beyond 2027. What kind of things is Cupertino considering? election The report says that Apple wants to switch to a different kind of display.

The current Vision Pro uses Sony’s OLED on silicon (OLEDoS) panel, which has an impressive pixel density of 3,391ppi. That’s out of the question for an affordable headset, so Apple has to choose between two different technologies.

One is W-OLED+CF. This condensed acronym describes a white OLED board with a color filter (to create red, green and blue colors). It is made on a glass plate instead of silicon.

W-OLED+CF schematic

But there are two ways to create a color filter. The more traditional option is to create a color filter on a second glass sheet. This is established technology, but because it involves an extra piece of glass, it is thicker.

The option Apple is leaning toward is to build the color filter on the thin-film encapsulation (TFE) of the first glass sheet, removing the need for a second sheet.

Samsung is using such technology to make screens for its foldable phones and in fact Samsung is the leading choice of display supplier for the cheap Apple Vision headset.

However, there is one issue. Even though Apple is targeting less than half the pixel density of the pricier Vision Pro, 1,500ppi versus 3,391ppi, that’s still well above the typical density of folding screens. Looking at the current crop of Z-foldables, the densest display is that of the Galaxy Z Flip6 at 426ppi. This is one third of the requirement.

Of course, 1,500 ppi is too much for a mobile device and 400+ ppi is plenty (harder flagships are usually 500 ppi or more). But that still means Samsung Display will have to develop higher density panels for the XR headset. The two-glass solution has not yet been completely ruled out.

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