I’m writing this editorial on the plane on the way back from the MWC event in Barcelona. My tablet is having to be used with its ‘hunt and peck’ keyboard. Although I’m usually very good it, I couldn’t find a power socket in the departures lounge and the battery life of my current Thinkpad (a T460S) is, frankly, rubbish. In every other way it’s a lovely machine, but Lenovo decided to drop the swappable battery, so there’s no extended battery option, nor can you carry a spare. It’s frustrating as I have had around four of the T4xx series and they have generally been great and the battery life has reduced a lot between my T440S and the T460S.
At MWC, battery capacity was quite a big selling point for many smartphone brands, with capacities up to 5000 mAh (around 3000 is typical for most smartphones). Battery life is also probably the reason that the Nokia 3310 display area was one of the busiest! While there were some (just a few) very exotic and high powered smartphones launched, when I first got to the Nokia booth on the first day, I decided to come back later as the crowds were three or four deep!
The issues around power are some of the reasons for the keen interest in microLEDS among the team. As it happened Chris wrote his piece a couple of weeks ago and Norbert wrote his article without knowing that I was covering the Yole report. Anyway, the desire for bright displays but with high efficacy is a longstanding one.
However, from that point of view, MWC was something of a disappointment. I didn’t see anything that was really new in the display field. In fact, one of the potential highlights was the arrival of HDR phones, but the displays were not really bright enough to make this a ‘wow’. Qualcomm had a demo of SDR and HDR, but although I got right the identification of which was which, I gather that this was far from universal. In fact, the SDR display had a more contrasty look and I could easily have chosen it as the HDR option.
However, while battery life remains the issue that it is, I can’t see that changing. I don’t expect smartphones with 1000 cd/m² to be seen until we have kind of breakthrough that MicroLED might bring. The sooner, the better, I think!
Bob
