Society of Information Display reveals 2019 Display Industry Award winners

Recipients of 25th annual awards include most significant technological advances in displays

The Society for Information Display (SID) announced the winners of its 25th annual Display Industry Awards. The 2019 Display Industry Award recipients reflect the ever-evolving display product landscape, with products designed to support wearables, immersion, vehicles, augmented reality, personal productivity, and more. The honorees will be recognized during the awards luncheon on, May 15, as part of Display Week, to be held this year at the San Jose Convention McEnery Center, May 12-17.

“The annual Display Industry Awards luncheon is always a much-anticipated highlight of Display Week because it allows us to showcase the high-quality, innovative work that is taking place in the display industry at every level – from components to end products,” said Dr. Wei Chen, Chair of the Display Industry Awards Committee for SID. “This year’s winners reflect the breadth and depth of recent product development and technology innovation necessary to support the relentless pace of consumer and industrial electronics evolution.“

At the Display Industry Awards Luncheon, Saran Diakité Kaba, vice president R&D and global Design PSA, will speak on creating a seamless user experience for connected and autonomous vehicles. To be considered for a 2019 Display Industry Award, a product had to be available for purchase during the 2018 calendar year. The seven winners, divided into three categories, were chosen by a distinguished panel of experts who evaluated the nominees for their degree of technical innovation and commercial significance, in addition to their potential for positive social impact.

The winning products and a brief description of each are listed below.

Displays of the Year:

Granted to display products with the most significant technological advances and/or outstanding features. The winners include:  

Apple’s LTPO OLED Display for Apple Watch Series 4
While retaining the original signature design, the fourth-generation Apple Watch has been refined, combining new hardware and software enhancements into a singular, unified form. The striking display, which is more than 30 percent larger at 40 mm or 44 mm, depending on the model, seamlessly integrates into the thinner, smaller case, while the new interface provides more information with richer detail. The display is the defining feature of Apple Watch, and Series 4 pushes that feature farther than ever. The challenge for designers was to make the display bigger without noticeably increasing the size of the case or compromising the battery life. Narrower borders enable a viewing area that’s more than 30 percent larger, while a new display technology called LTPO improves power efficiency, helping users get through on a single charge.

Samsung Electronics’ Modular MicroLED Display (The Wall)
The Wall is a display based on microLED technology. It is made up of millions of individual pixels of self-emitting inorganic red, green, and blue microscopic LED chips to produce brilliant colors and deep blacks onscreen for striking picture quality. The display is immune to burn-in and has a lifespan of 100,000 hours. Along with its microLED-based technology, Samsung’s Quantum Processor Modular and AI-Upscaling help The Wall achieve pristine picture quality up to 8K resolution, as well as pure colors, stunning high-dynamic range (HDR) 10+, and a peak luminance of up to 2,000 nits.  MicroLED technology is a desirable alternative to other display technologies because, while it is made up of self-emitting pixels that turn on and off individually, its inorganic materials won’t degrade or cause screen burn-in over time. Additionally, Samsung’s unique Black Seal technology that is applied to each microLED creates a seamless, uniform canvas with deeper blacks than ever before. The Wall is a large-format modular display ideal for both luxury living and business.

Sony Crystal LED Display System
The Crystal LED Display System from Sony consists of a display controller and modular display units made from ultrafine microLEDs. This technology creates spectacular, large-scale video walls with lifelike realism. Crystal LED brings imagery to life with awe-inspiring visuals in any environment, with applications ranging from industrial product design and manufacturing to theme parks and museums, corporate meeting rooms and lobbies, retail showrooms, lecture theaters, and broadcast studios. In addition to high contrast, this display supports high-dynamic range (HDR), with 10-bit color depth and enormous color gamut. Sony has also developed active-matrix pixel-drive circuitry with micro ICs, which achieves an ultra-fast video response time with a 120-Hz refresh rate –ideal for sports, concerts, or training simulations requiring large-screen visuals with no delay or blur. The bezel-free design of the display unit ensures no visible seam between multiple display units and makes it possible to create impressive large-scale displays of virtually any dimension and aspect ratio. 

Display Components of the Year

This award is granted for novel components that have significantly enhanced the performance of a display. A component is sold as a separate part destined to be incorporated into a display. A component may also include display-enhancing materials and/or parts fabricated with new processes. The winners include:

Dexerials AR Films for Piano Black Design
The new Dexerials AR film, AR100-T0810, is glossy in appearance while maintaining a reflectivity of around 0.3 percent. The film’s structure has an anti-smudge top coating, dry-sputtered layers of high and low refractive-index coatings, and clear hard coat on triacetylcellulose (TAC) substrate. Dexerials manufactures the film in a roll-to-roll process under cleanroom conditions to achieve high quality. The development of the product was motivated by several OEM requests in the North American region. Another development target was curved cover-lens compatibility. While curved cover lenses make their way into automotive displays, the materials for displays still need to meet automotive requirements. This product represents a significant step in a display field in which consumers prefer piano-black vehicle interiors. Dexerials’ AR films help flat-panel and curved displays maintain a glossy appearance, achieve a dead-front aesthetic at various viewing angles, and ensure reflections don’t disturb the driver.

SCHOTT’s RealView High-Refractive Index Glass Wafers
SCHOTT RealView is a class of high-index glass wafers designed to propel the development of augmented-reality (AR) and mixed-reality (MR) smartglasses with superior image quality, enabling field-of-view closer to that of human peripheral vision. SCHOTT RealView high-index glass wafers capitalize on a total internal reflection (TIR) angle. The portfolio of refractive indices for RealView drives the field-of-view by up to 2x compared to conventional glass. SCHOTT leveraged more than 130 years’ experience in glass making to develop these extremely thin, lightweight wafers to ensure users of smartglasses find them comfortable. At the same time, SCHOTT RealView features an extremely low variation in total thickness, a property that produces extremely sharp, high-contrast imaging. In this important property, SCHOTT achieved up to a factor of 10 tighter specifications compared to normal glass wafers used for semiconductor and optoelectronic applications. Researchers at SCHOTT have leveraged their expertise in glass science, melting, and hot forming, as well as surface processing of optical materials, to create a product that features superior optical properties but can also be produced efficiently in mass-market quantities. SCHOTT has invested in a global manufacturing set-up for mass-producing the very thinnest RealView wafers.

Display Applications of the Year

This award is granted for novel and outstanding applications of a display, where the display itself is not necessarily a new device. The winners include:  

Japan Display Curved LCDs for Automotive Dashboards
In 2016, JDI began design of 15.0-in. and 12.3-in. TFT LCDs for automotive cockpit use in collaboration with Volkswagen, Germany, culminating in the Tuareg SUV market introduction in May 2018. Both displays represent the world’s first curved TFT LCDs in production for automotive dashboards. The curved, 3D-shaped displays, used in combination, enable a stylish and aesthetically pleasing interior dashboard, allowing automotive OEMs more flexibility in design and styling.  The 15.0-in. LTPS-TFT LCD has a concave R3,000-mm-radius curved design, with 1,920 x 1,020 resolution, LED backlight with 900 cd/m² (min) luminance, and in-cell touch functionality.  The 12.3-in. LTPS-TFT LCD has a concave R1,500-mm-radius curved design, with 1,920 x 720 resolution and an LED backlight with 780 cd/m² (min) luminance. Furthermore, the 15.0-in. TFT LCD is the world’s first curved display in mass production with in-cell touch functionality.

Lenovo’s Yoga Book C930 with Dual Display 
The Yoga Book C930 is the world’s first dual display laptop with E Ink — combining a QHD LCD with a multi-functional E Ink display that transforms with just one click. Type on the keyboard to send an email; sketch out your next project with a digital pen; or sit back with an e-book—all on one screen, with an extra screen to spare. First among the E Ink display’s multiple functions is the 10.8-in. on-screen touch keyboard. Featuring haptic feedback and an easily customizable layout, it offers a 22 percent increase in typing productivity from the previous-generation Yoga Book. And it’s powered by AI, which means the more it is used, the more accurate it becomes. The E Ink display easily transforms into a notepad—users can sketch, write, develop formulas, and more with the optional Lenovo Precision Pen, featuring 4,096 levels of sensitivity. When the project is done, it can be digitized with a few clicks and added to the main display. E Ink Note works seamlessly with Windows 10.