Brighter, long-lasting smartphone screens in the offing

Scientists have developed a new technique that could make smartphone and TV displays brighter, with better contrast and longer life.

The pixels in many modern screens for TVs, smartphones, tablets, and laptops are lit by little devices called organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs).

To ensure that it is possible to see the images from such screens on a bright sunny day, OLED screens are covered with an anti-glare filter, said researchers at Imperial College London in the UK.

However, because of the physics of how the anti-glare filter works, half of the light generated by each OLED pixel remains trapped within the display, which halves the energy efficiency of the OLED.