Philips released their first OLED panels (or Lumiblades, as they call them) back in April 2009, and in May they sent us a few panels for a review. Since then Philips released new panels, and last week they sent us a new "experience kit" with two OLEDs: a white dot and a white tall rectangle.
Back in June, Lumiotec announced a couple of new OLED lamps: the Vanity desk lamp and the world's cheapest OLED lamp, the $450 Hanger. Both use a single square OLED panel (we reviewed a previous generation panel back in September 2010). They were kind enough to send both lamps for a review, and after a few weeks of dealings with the Israeli customs, the lamps finally arrived and here's my review.
Both lamps use Lumiotec's Version-2 square OLED panels (14.5 x 14.5 mm active area) which feature a color temperature of 4,900K and a maximum luminance of 2,700 cd/m2. The panels are not very efficient at 10.5 lm/W (they use all-fluorscent OLEDs). The Hanger consumes 12 W while the Vanity consumes 13 W (the extra Watt is because of the electric touch sensor, more on this below). Here's our hands-on review of Lumiotec's Version-1 panels.
Blackbody announced their new Smart OLED lamp family back in September 2011, and they kindly sent us a V-LUX OLED desk lamp for a review. The V-LUX is an OLED desk lamp with two long rectangular OLED panels, designed by Bertrand's ID Medas. The V-LUX comes in 4 colors - gray, red, black and white - they sent me the black one.
Each OLED panel is 100 cm2 in size, has a color rendering index of 80 and a color temperature of 3200K. The V-LUX consumes 2.8 W and its size is 35 (H) x 25 (W) x 46 (L) cm. The price is â¬572.
Engadget posted a review of Samsung's Galaxy Note, and they say that "the 5.3" HD Super AMOLED display is as gorgeous as it is enormous...1280 x 800 pixels in a smartphone display is quite a feat, and it's just as impressive to behold as it sounds. The Note's 5.3-inch Super AMOLED screen is incredibly bright, vibrant and detailed, thanks to its 285ppi resolution... colors on the Note pop just as they do on the GS II, that eye-pleasing contrast and saturation we've come to love from Samsung's AMOLED displays, and little vibrancy is lost when viewed from the side. However, color accuracy does start to wander a bit. This is indeed a PenTile display and so there are more green sub-pixels than any other color. This gives everything an ever-so slightly sickly tinge, especially when viewed off-angle..."
Samsung's Galaxy Note is a large Android v2.3 phone (or mini-tablet?) with a 5.3" Super AMOLED display with an HD resolution: 1280x800. Other specs include a dual-core 1.4Ghz processor, 8mp camera, touch display with pen input (it has a stylus). The phone is 9.65mm thick and weights 178 grams. The note is now shipping in Europe (£592 in the UK, without a contract).
A review of Samsung's W880 mobile phone:
The SCH-W880 is a Korean-market digital camera and a mobile phone in one featuring a 3.3" WVGA AMOLED touch display and a 12Mp camera with 3x optical zoom and HD video recording.
Here's a nice Italian video showing the Samsung i7500 beautiful 3.2" HVGA (320x480) AMOLED display:
So it's now exactly 4 months after I got my Unitedkeys OLED keyboard. It's a regular 103-keys keyboard, that includes also 9 customized yellow OLED keys.
When I first reviewed it, I said that the OLEDs look good, the keyboard itself is great, but the software is a bit clunky. Now I want to update the review, after having used the keyboard for a while.
Unitedkeys OLED keyboardMy major complains are still about the software - there are some annoying bugs (for example, many times it won't work after a reboot, and you need click on the taskbar icon, and then close the software window for it to work). As far as I know, they haven't issued any updates yet. Also I'd like more options, for example having a key that will change to a different running application.
Unitedkeys major marketing message is that the keyboard is a productivity tool, not just a cool gadget. About the coolness there's no doubt - it's a great looking thing. But I wanted to test the productivity bit. So I enabled the keyboard to work with the two applications I use most:
When not running these two applications, the icons launch different programs (like Explorer, GIMP, Delphi...). This is actually very useful.
Anyway, now when I want to search for a text in my code, or open a file, or find text in firefox, or close a tab, I can do it with a single keystroke. The main problem? I don't always remember that the keys are there, and after all using shift-F is not so difficult to begin with... and I already remember all those key combinations anyway. When I do remember to use the OLED keys, they are fun to use, and can save a bit of time.
So my main conclusion? The keyboard is cool, and can help with productivity, a little bit, but you have to get used to using it - it won't happen immediately. It might be more useful to use it for less common key combinations, those that you do not remember, or maybe for software tools that have more options (like a word processor, photoshop, etc.).
If you want to try it yourself, the keyboard now sales for 260$, through amazon.com.
Here's a review of Samsung's S8300 Ultra Touch mobile phone - a slider phone with a 2.8" WQVGA AMOLED display, 8Mp camera with LED flash, DivX support, A-GPS and a FM radio:
