OLED, PMOLED, and AMOLED — The Major Difference

OLED represents Organic Light-emitting Diode, they are made up of materials that ignite when electricity is supplied. OLED displays are emissive in nature, which means they do not need any source of backlight or filtering substance, unlike LCDs.

Therefore, OLEDs are much more flexible and transparent and are competent in giving the best quality images.

OLED display is an innovative technology that is known for its thin, efficient and bright displays. It can be categorized into two types i.e. Passive Matrix (PMOLED) and the other one is Active Matrix (AMOLED), both have different driving electronics.

Related Article: Difference between LCD and OLED displays

Which one is better PMOLED or AMOLED?

On one hand, PMOLED display consists of a control scheme in which you are able to control every single line display on screen (one by one).

It does not contain any storage capacitor, due to which most of the pixels in the lines are Off.

In order to compensate for the display and make it bright, you have to use more voltage.

For instance, if you have 10 lines, then you have to make each line 10 times bright.

The number of lines may vary depending on the display required but its an average ratio required to brighten the lines.

They are cheap but can be easily fabricated, also not as efficient as expected, the OLED materials do not have a long life as they need high voltage.

• PMOLED displays use restricted resolutions and size, and with each line added, you got to use more voltage. Their displays are usually of a typical size i.e. up to 3”. Mostly, these displays are used for character data or some sort of small icons, such as in Mobile phone display, iPod display, and MP3 display.
• AMOLED display is TFT drove, which does have a storage capacitor, hence it is in a position to display large size displays, in terms of resolution. By using AMOLED the displays can be controlled easily as they have their owned storage capacity and are able to display high resolutions easily in relation to PMOLED. They are not at all restricted in terms of storage and resolution.

Initially, the first OLED product launched in the market was PMOLED based. The best examples are MP3 players, sub-displays on mobile phones, and radio used in automobiles.

In the beginning, the displays used to be small and usually had only one or two colors in the display. After that in 2007, AMOLED panels came into use, smartphones, cameras, tablets, laptops, TVs almost all electronic gadget that came with the display used flexible AMOLED display.

Conclusion –

Currently, AMOLED market trends is majorly occupied by Samsung Display and LG. The growth and scope of this technology don’t seem to end as since 2016 it has been expanded on a large scale. Approximately, 300 million panels are produced in a year. To which if we compare the PMOLED market, the demand and supply are too small in numbers. Eventually, it’s going to get obsolete as AMOLED seem to outnumber any other alternative.