This article is from WeChat official account: Ai Faner (ID: ifanr) , author: Zhou Yu, the original title: “do not burn the screen, not to hurt the eyes, this new screen on the iPad Pro to use it will be displayed in the future? | Hard Philosophy, title picture from: IC photo

Some time ago, Apple’s announcement of the time of the WWDC Developer Conference sparked a lot of discussion. According to Apple’s past practice, the spring new product launch conference was announced first rather than the WWDC held later.

And this year’s spring conference is also more anticipated. Since iPad Pro has used iPadOS, its own hardware has not been greatly upgraded. Many friends around me are still using iPad Pro 2018 with Magic Keyboard.

Quexianyu and other second-hand trading platforms will also find that the value preservation rate of iPad Pro 2018 is relatively high among the iPad Pro released in recent years. What kind of iPad Pro Apple will produce this year to change this status and attract consumers to change phones is what interests many iPad users.

Apple’s answer is the screen. According to a forecast report by well-known Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the iPad Pro will use a new mini LED screen.

1. How does a mini LED screen that does not burn the screen, hurt the eyes, and has a high brightness?

In order to better explain the characteristics of mini LED and why Apple chose it, we will compare it with common LCD screens and OLED screens in the industry this time.

Generally speaking, LCD screens are composed of white LED lights around the screen to form a backlight layer, and then through the filter layer, liquid crystal layer and other components, the three primary colors of red, green and blue are mixed and filtered to display various different color.

The phenomenon of light leakage on the iPad is that the LEDs around the screen are not closely attached

Mini LED is also called sub-millimeter light-emitting diode. The general method of this screen is to cover the entire backlight layer with thousands of tiny LED lights. It can be said that mini LED is an optimized and improved version of LCD screen.

This allows it to independently control a single LED light, achieving a function similar to Always On Display ( When the other part goes out, some simple information is displayed while saving power.

More LED lights are also conducive to finer display. The most intuitive thing should be the color contrast. Compared with LCD screens, mini LED screens can achieve finer color level adjustments to achieve high contrast, and can even be compared with OLED The screen is comparable.

Pro Display XDR uses 576 blue LED

The other is brightnessIn addition, more LED lights are also conducive to achieving higher brightness. Apple’s Pro Display XDR display just launched in 2019 uses a similar technology to improve the screen quality by adding LED lights and covering the backlight layer.

Pro Display XDR has a brightness of 1000 nits, a peak brightness of 1600 nits, and a contrast ratio of 1000000:1. I believe that the finer mini LED screen will not be too far from the Pro Display XDR.

Speaking of this, you may be curious, Always On Display, high contrast, and high brightness are not the characteristics of OLED screens. Indeed, in these respects, the technical principles of mini LEDs are similar to those of OLED screens, in that they both finely control a single lamp bead to improve the quality of the screen.

However, OLED screens, which are now the mainstream in the mobile phone industry, have not satisfied consumers. One of the problems is that the screen burns, and the other is that the low-brightness screen is prone to fatigue, commonly known as “blind-eye screen”, which is related to the material used in the OLED screen.

The full name of OLED is organic light-emitting diode(organic light-emitting diode), as an organic material, it is more prone to ageing than inorganic materials , And the aging degree of organic light-emitting diodes at different positions on the screen is different.

The organic light-emitting diodes that display the same content for a long time cannot be energized to adjust the color and brightness after aging, which causes the screen to display fixed content in the aging position for a long time, which is “burning screen”.

Although with the development of technology, there are no large-scale burn-in cases, but the life of organic light-emitting diodes is still limited, and mini LED and LCD screens do not use organic materials, naturally there will be no burn-in problems .

The second problem is eye injury. OLED screens generally display content by constantly turning on and off, based on the principle of visual stay of the human eye, that is, PWM dimming display. But there is also a problem-human eyes are prone to discomfort in a low-frequency light-off environment.

At the same time, the organic light-emitting diodes are prone to aging, and the flashing frequency of the lamp bead switch is generally not very high, and the screen flashing frequency will be further reduced under low brightness.

This has caused many people to feel dry and uncomfortable after watching the screen for a long time at night. Many users say that “LCD will never be a slave” because of this. As an improved version of the LCD screen, Mini LED naturally does not have this problem.

mini LED integrates the advantages of OLED screens and solves some of the disadvantages of LCD and LCD. It is a good substitute. Sony and Xiaomi have already launched corresponding TV products. With the release of the new iPad Pro, There will also be more and more products using mini LED screens.

2. Which Apple products can we still see mini LEDs on?

When Apple launched the Pro Display XDR in 2019, its high price and its high quality sparked a lot of discussion, which made me look forward to the actual experience of the new iPad Pro with a mini LED screen.

Of course, Apple has always had a strategy of integrating good design and good technology into more Apple products to form a unified ecological experience. Touch ID, vibration motors, etc. are all examples, and mini LEDs may also enter other products.

For the iPad product line, the iPad Pro will use mini LED screens. It has been exposed many times, but iPad Air and ordinary iPads should not use mini LED screens in the short term. On the one hand, there are cost constraints and the other Apple also needs to use the screen to highlight the high-end positioning of the iPad Pro.

This is the same as in the past Apple used A series chips to maintain a certain basic experience for the entire product series. Through the screen, lens, And even the positioning strategy of the fuselage shape and material highlighting product differentiation is also consistent.

Apple Watch and iPad Pro Pictures from: Apple

The industry forecast recently released by well-known Apple analyst Ming-Chi Guo, iPad Pro will use mini LED screens, and iPad Air may use OLED screens. After all, after long-term development, the maturity and cost control of OLED screens have been very good. Not bad.

In addition, there is the Mac product line. Since Apple used the M1 chip on MacBook Pro and MacBook Air last year, the discussion about its battery life and performance advantages has not ended.

It can also be seen from the disassembly diagram that this old mold is no longer suitable for M1 chips. There are also many reports in the industry about Apple’s launch of new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air this year.

The mold of MacBook Air has not changed after adopting M1 chip, and the fan position is replaced with an aluminum extender. Picture from: iFixit

There are many reports that MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac will use new molds, and the shape will undergo major changes. Guo Mingchi’s forecast report also mentioned that MacBook Air and MacBook Pro will use mini LED screens.

Compared with the iPad Pro, the Mac series will have higher output. According to MacRumors, Apple’s Mac sales in the fourth quarter of 2020 set a new record, and the revenue generated by Mac products was 9 billion US dollars, higher than the same period last year. Of US$7 billion, an increase of 29%.

New molds and new screens will obviously further enhance product strength and appeal to consumers. Of course, there are claims in the industry that Apple’s self-developed chip M1 will reduce costs and offset the increase in costs caused by mini LEDs. However, it can The amount of offset still depends on the situation of new product sales.

The final question is whether the iPhone will use a mini LED screen in the future. There is not much hope for this in the short term.

First of all, it is limited by yield and cost. Whether it is Pro Display XDR or iPad Pro, the size of the device is much larger than that of the iPhone, and the internal space is larger.

Sufficient LED lights must be placed in small devices, and high resolution must be achieved. Special control chips and related circuits must also be placed to achieve the purpose of accurately adjusting the brightness and color of the LEDs. These all raise the issue of assembly accuracy. Higher requirements. At present, most of the mini LED screens appear on TVs and monitors. There are also reasons for high technical difficulty and cost constraints.

On the other hand, the structure of the mini LED is similar to that of the LCD screen. It has components such as backlight layer and liquid crystal layer. The screen thickness is relatively high. Because of its self-luminous characteristics, the red, yellow and blue light beads on the screen can be energized. Luminous, which allows the screen to be very thin, and is also suitable for small portable products such as mobile phones.

OLED screen structure is much simpler and thinner than LCD screens

Technological breakthroughs require continuous investment and time, and the pursuit of “all fronts are screens” will also allow iPhone to continue to adopt OLED screens.

3. The mini LED is great, but the future of display is not it
< /p>

We just talked a lot about the characteristics and advantages of mini LED screens, and there are more related products on the market, but this does not mean that products that include displays will use it.

On the one hand, it is the consideration of cost and product positioning. On the other hand, the industry is not without a better screen technology than it. That is the Micro LED screen, which we introduced in the previous article.

Comparison of LCD, OLED, micro LED, picture source: Wikipedia

The Micro LED screen is composed of inorganic light-emitting diodes. Similar to the OLED screen, it is also composed of millions of LED beads, most of which are within 30μm in size, and some even reach 5μm.Level.

Each lamp bead can emit light without relying on the backlight layer, so that higher brightness and color contrast can be achieved. At the same time, because the Micro LED uses inorganic materials, there will be no burn-in problems on the OLED screen and the discomfort of long-term screen viewing caused by PWM dimming.

Compared with mini LEDs, Micro LEDs are thinner and bendable because of their self-luminous properties, and are suitable for more types of devices.

However, its disadvantage compared to mini LED and OLED is that the cost and technical difficulty are high. It is difficult to produce such tiny particles, and it is necessary to assemble millions of particles into Among a screen, the difficulty of its production can be imagined, and the yield rate is relatively low.

Sony once exhibited a demonstration product called Crystal LED Display in 2012, which used a Micro LED screen with a 55-inch resolution of 1080P.

By 2019, Sony announced that it can use multiple Micro LED screens to assemble a display with a resolution of 16K. However, the prices of Micro LED screens on the market are relatively expensive and are not affordable for ordinary consumers.

Sony once demonstrated the giant “Crystal LED Display” at CES, picture source: SONY

Sony has also stated that this technology is suitable for places that require high display effects such as movie theaters, museums, and theaters.

The mini LED screen as a transitional product is not perfect, But due to its high-quality performance, Micro LED screen technology will become one of the mainstream choices during this period of time when the Micro LED screen technology is not mature.

New technologies can bring a better experience, but cost reduction and mass production also have its meaning, making better experiences popular. Therefore, the application of mini LED screens in many Apple products and even display products is also worth looking forward to.

This article is from WeChat official account: Ai Faner (ID: ifanr) , author: Zhou Yu