Tft lcd touch screen.TFT screen upgrade iPhone battery life. Apple’s exclusive LTPO TFT OLED screen consumes less power and is easy to improve resolution and refresh rates.

Aug. 25, according to a new report released by research company IHS Markit, in the long run, Apple may adopt a new LTPO TFT technology OLED display panel for iPhone and Apple Watch displays, which will help extend the device’s battery life and provide higher resolution.

The control part of the general display screen, often referred to as the “backplane”, is responsible for turning on and off individual pixels, and the substrate plays an important role in determining the resolution, refresh rate and power consumption of the whole screen. At present, the OLED displays on smart phones use LTPS TFT (low temperature polysilicon thin film transistor) as the standard backplane technology.

IHS Markit said that in the future, Apple is very likely to change the back panel of the iPhone display from LTPS TFT to LTPO TFT (low temperature polycrystalline oxide) technology.

In theory, LTPO TFT can save 5-15% of power compared with traditional LTPS TFT technology, making the entire display screen less power consumption. Considering that the display screen has always been the most power-consuming component of mobile devices such as smartphones, the use of OLED screens based on the new LTPO TFT substrate is bound to further extend the battery life of the iPhone.

IHS Markit said that the technical explanation is more complex and not easy to understand. But to put it simply, the current leakage of the Oxide TFT structure used by LPTO is significantly less than that of traditional LTPS, which can achieve more efficient electron mobility, better stability and scalability.

In any case, power consumption is increasing as the size and resolution of the iPhone display increases, so anything that can improve battery life is a bright side.

In addition to power savings, LTPO TFT makes it easier to produce panels with higher pixel density (greater resolution) to drive higher refresh rates (240Hz or higher) than LTPS TFT.

As we all know, iPhone X is an OLED screen with PenTile pixel arrangement, so its 459ppi pixel density is only equivalent to the traditional RGB arrangement 306ppi, which is lower than the 326ppi of Retina LCD screen iPhone. Therefore, Apple will definitely use LTPO TFT to improve iPhone resolution or restore RGB sub-pixel arrangement, and high refresh rate has always been another direction that Apple is pursuing, and iPad Pro is the best example.

In fact, Apple has been delving into smartphone display technology for a long time. It won the exclusive patent for LTPO (LTPS+IGZO) technology a long time ago, and won three important patents, which were reported by the media in 2014, 2015 and this year. At the time, the industry thought that if Apple’s LTPO technology were introduced, it would probably change the landscape of the entire display panel market.

Based on this, IHS Markit said in the report that Apple is absolutely very interested in developing OLED panels with LTPO technology. After all, in the LCD era, Apple cooperated deeply with a number of display panel manufacturers in technology, thus greatly improving panel performance and reducing costs. Therefore, Apple, which has failed to participate in both substrate technology and driving IC in the OLED era, must very much hope to win more controllers for OLED display components. Not the exclusive control of Samsung or LG.