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Some tablets and smartphones ship with an AMOLED display. Newer ones are shipping with a “Super AMOLED” display. What so super about it, and what does all this alphabet soup even mean?

The short version is that a Super AMOLED touchscreen display integrates touch sensors with the glass surface panel, eliminating at least one layer of glass and with it, a layer of air. That’s what makes Super AMOLED super. Only Samsung makes it.

Super AMOLED schematic from Samsung

I said “at least one layer of glass” because AMOLED itself eliminates at least one layer in a display. The current Galaxy Tab, for example, uses a TFT-LCD (Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display) screen. Until very recently, TFT-LCD has been the state of the art in thin color displays and is still the only cost-effective option in the vast majority of displays larger than a smartphone screen.

TFT-LCD has approximately four layers: a backlight, a TFT color filter, a touch sensor panel, and an outer glass screen. AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) eliminates the separate backlight. Apple’s iPhone 4, among others, uses a Samsung-made AMOLED display.

AMOLED, however, is known for having problems with glare and readability in direct sunlight, even relative to average LCD screens. By minimizing the number of reflective surfaces and power necessary to achieve vivid color, Super AMOLED was designed in part to address this.

Samsung introduced Super AMOLED to commercial devices this year with the Samsung Wave, which ran their own Bada OS. The Android-powered Samsung Galaxy series of smartphones made the displays popular, and it’s since appeared on Samsung’s Windows Phone 7 handsets as well.

There are other advanced color technologies in the market, all of them super, and all of them extra-expensive: Super LCD recently joined Super IPS and Advanced Super View. But only Super AMOLED has really captured the popular imagination.

A 7-inch Android tablet with an AMOLED display would probably be a serious advance over its current LCD screen. But if it’s “just” AMOLED, something about it would just seem… less than super.

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Source:wired.com

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Samsung’s bet on Android seems to have paid off big for the company. Samsung has shipped more than one million Galaxy S phones in the U.S. since the devices were launched in mid-July.

The news makes the Galaxy S devices one of the hottest Android phones available today, though the smartphones haven’t reached iPhone-like popularity yet. Apple sold 1.7 million iPhone 4 devices in just the first three days of sales in June.

So far, Samsung has two models of the Galaxy S phones, Samsung Vibrant and SamsungCapitvate, available on T-Mobile and AT&T respectively. But two more Galaxy S devices are expected to debut soon–Samsung Epic 4G on Sprint and Samsung Fascinate on Verizon Wireless.

Common to all these devices are features such as AMOLED display, a 1GHz processor called ‘Hummingbird’ and entertainment apps. Samsung says all Galaxy S devices will be upgraded to Android 2.2 Froyo operating system.

It will be interesting to see if the Galaxy S phones can topple Motorola Droid and the HTC Evo as the best-selling Android phones.Motorola recently launched Droid 2 on Verizon Wireless and the Evo has reigned on Sprint as the first 4G phone.

Samsung’s Epic 4G, which is scheduled to be available on Sprint starting August 31, could finally give the Evo some real competition.

Meanwhile, Samsung is gearing up to launch a 7-inch tablet in September called the ‘Galaxy Tab’. The tablet will run Android 2.2 Froyo OS, include video-calling capability and full web browsingwhich likely means support for Flash, according to a teaser video that Samsung posted last week.

Photo: Samsung Vibrant (Stefan Armijo/Wired.com)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews