In the rumors of how Apple products will develop in the future, the "mini LED screen" has always been an inevitable talking point.
In the latest report, Ming-Chi Kuo, an industry analyst, reiterated Apple's forecast that it will launch mini LED screen devices this year.
However, unlike the report released last year, this time he almost doubled the products that the mini LED screen may cover, including product lines including iPad and Mac.
He believes that the mini LED products that Apple is developing may include the following six models: 12.9-inch iPad Pro, 27-inch iMac Pro, 14.1-inch MacBook Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro, 10.2-inch iPad, and 7.9-inch iPad mini.
There are reasons to consider the 14.1-inch MacBook Pro as an iteration of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, just as Apple introduced the 16-inch MacBook Pro last year instead of the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
The 10.2-inch iPad is likely to be the next-generation iPad Air. This product launched the third-generation last year, but only upgraded the processor to the A12 chip with a slightly larger screen, and there were no other innovative upgrades.
In the report, Ming-Chi Kuo stated that mini LED screen technology will play a key role in Apple's future medium-sized device innovations.
At this year's CES International Consumer Electronics Show, manufacturers have launched various products equipped with mini LED screens. For a time, mini LED has become a frequent guest in various scientific and technological reports. So what exactly is this technology?
At present, the display technologies used in mobile phone screens on the market are mostly divided into two categories, namely OLED and LCD. The most representative are the iPhone XS series and iPhone XR introduced by Apple in 2018. The former is equipped with an OLED screen, while the latter is an LCD screen.
Due to its self-luminous characteristics, OLED display technology has many inherent advantages, such as high saturation, high contrast, fast screen response speed, high brightness and other characteristics that affect the look and feel of the screen.
As mobile phones gradually enter the "full screen era", the flexible and thin thickness of OLEDs has also allowed manufacturers to develop more imaginations in terms of screen form. In recent years, the special-shaped full-screen and foldable screens have this feature. derivative.
In contrast, LCD screens cannot rely on self-illumination but rely on a backlight layer for display, so there are also many inherent defects, such as screen light leakage, poor screen perception, and lack of flexible features.
Fortunately, this screen technology has low cost, so it still exists in some low-end products.
In 2017, Apple introduced the iPhone X equipped with an OLED screen. Its four-sided monospaced full-screen design is based on the flexible characteristics of the OLED screen.
Although the iPhone XR equipped with an LCD screen the following year also achieved this design, but its screen bezel is wider, and it is still more beautiful than the OLED screen.
However, the OLED screen is not perfect. Because it uses organic materials and each pixel supports self-illumination, when some pixels are lit for a longer time, the life of different pixels on the screen will not appear. Synchronization, which will cause the phenomenon of "burning screen".
In fact, even the top Apple in the industry has stated that it cannot completely avoid the defects of OLED "burn-in".
In the official support document of "Introduction to the Super Retina XDR Display", Apple answered the possible burn-in phenomenon: "During long-term use, OLED displays may also show slight visual changes.
This is also a normal phenomenon and includes 'image sticking' or 'burn-in'.
This phenomenon means that even after a new image is displayed on the screen, the display shows a faint residual image. "" We designed our Super Retina and Super Retina XDR displays to reduce the impact of OLED 'burn-in'. "
In addition, OLED screens also suffer from flicker. In simple terms, due to technical characteristics, OLEDs cannot adjust the backlight layer voltage to control brightness like LCDs. Instead, they use PMW dimming.
This method of dimming can achieve the effect of controlling brightness by quickly switching the screen, but under low brightness conditions, the screen image flicker caused by this fast switching is also the reason why many people think that watching OLED screens for a long time will cause eye discomfort One.
Mini LED is a new generation of display technology born between OLED and traditional LCD. It reduces the size of LED light source to 100-200 microns on the structure of traditional LCD screen, and it is filled with LEDs in the backlight module through a matrix arrangement. .
This design not only enables high contrast, high brightness (over 1000 nits), HDR, high contrast and other traditional LCD screens do not have the advantages, but also avoids the inherent disadvantages of OLED screens such as "burning screen" and "strobe".
However, due to the use of mini LED display technology in LCD screens will use a large number of LED light sources. Take a 5.5-inch screen with a resolution of 1920 × 1080 as an example, the number of LEDs will be as high as 2000-10,000.
When the number of particles is small, a longer optical distance is required, which results in an increase in the thickness of the screen. However, the number of particles may cause a heat dissipation problem.
This may also be one of the reasons why Apple hopes to test the screen technology on medium-sized devices such as iPad and MacBook.
