Samsung SDI (Samsung Display Interface) is looking to spearhead the manufacturing of wide VGA (or wVGA, 480 x 800) OLEDs for handhelds. In English, that means the company, together with Clairvoyante, Inc. is looking to make high-res displays for our compact gizmos.

According to a press release, Samsung and Clairvoyante has teamed up to make the wVGA active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) dream come true. The joint venture will be making use of the Clairvoyante's PenTile subpixel rendering technology and will be resulting (hopefully) in a 3.08-inch diagonal screen perfect for upcoming handheld applications.

Right now, we only have displays of up to quarter VGA (qVGA or 240 x 320) because of the challenges in manufacturing, among other things. According to the release, it will be made possible since "PenTile technology makes it possible to attain this improved performance by eliminating one-third of the subpixels while maintaining the same display resolution."

Sung-Chul Kim, Samsung SDI vice president had this to say:

Our partnership with Clairvoyante will create a new PenTile OLED panel that will lead the handheld market with a power-efficient, high-resolution OLED panel that supports continued innovation in emerging handheld applications.

And Samsung seems very confident about the project (just like Sony and its XEL-1 OLED TV), indicating an ETA of Q1 2008 for samples and Q3 for the mass production. For tech heads out there, here are the specs:

• Specifications: 3.08 inch PenTile RGB OLED from Samsung SDI
• Diagonal 3.08 inches
• Luminance 200 cd/m2
• Contrast 1000:1
• Power consumption 400 mW
• Color Gamut (NTSC) 100%
• Format Wide VGA 480 x 800

   

We get all sorts of phone designs all the time, but somehow, an individual design often falls short of everything we'd like in a phone. So a 15-year old Korean high school student studying in Canada decided to make a phone that he thought would fit all of a student's needs. The results were quite impressive.

Andrew Kim wanted to enter a high school design competition focused on social networking. His entry was "The Butterfly", a slide phone that features a touch screen and a main screen that interacts with each other. It features an SD card slot for memory expansion, an SVGA camera, the aforementioned touch display and an AMOLED display. It also boasts of conveniences such as a lockable hold switch, 18-hour rechargeable battery and a flippable design.

It's a great concept, but it's still far from being professional. Of course, we cut Andrew some slack, him being in high school and all. We think he could be trained to become a great phone designer! And we wish we'd get to see all the other entries in this contest. That'll be interesting...