Samsung Dazzles With Futuristic Transparent And Mirrored OLED Displays

Just when you think you've seen everything, here comes Samsung with the industry's first mirror and transparent OLED display panels. The South Korean outfit rolled out the displays at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and is pitching the displays as being suitable for personalized shopping and informational browsing.

Paired with Intel's Real Sense technology, Samsung's displays are able to create an interactive closet or "self-modeling" wardrobe so that consumers can see what different types of clothes and jewelry would look like on them. It's a rather unique angle for the online shopping experience and could help take the guesswork out of ordering clothing and accessories.

Samsung is pitching its displays to retailers who might want to offer shoppers a virtual fitting room, though I think this is something that could be adopted by consumers sometime down the line, depending on cost. There's quite a bit of logistics involved in getting retailers to support the technology for home consumers, but the ones that ultimately jumped aboard would have a leg up on the competition, if this technology ever made its way to households.

In any event, the mirror OLED display panel has a more than 75 percent reflectance level and delivers at least 50 percent higher reflectance than competitive mirror LCDs that are now available. It also boasts a superior color gamut at 100 percent of NTSC versus just 70 percent, along with a high contrast ratio (100,000:1) and fast response time (under 1ms). Another bonus is that it doesn't need an ambient backlight for display images.


The transparent OLED display is also better spec'd than its LCD counterpart. It too boasts 100 percent coverage of NTSC and has a transparency level of more than 40 percent. Samsung sees transparent OLEDs being used in car dealerships to enhance consumer-facing displays, as well as other innovative signage applications in public information and transportation environments.

No word on how much these panels will cost or when they'll find their way to the field.