OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode. OLED screens are thinner, promise better colors, and consumes less power. OLEDs are common in high-end phones today thanks to their power sipping designs that allow for prolonged battery life.

A while back last month at CES, Samsung showed off a 14-inch notebook that used a see-through OLED screen. The Korean Electronics giant now says that, testing suggests the PC could be in shops within the next 12 months. It is also said that “all” Samsung’s AV hardware could use the technology soon!

AMOLEDs (Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) by themselves are considered an advantage over LCDs, thanks to the thinness, their color accuracy and the absence of an energy-hungry back light. Transparency is likely to be just a cosmetic feature at first, but it allows for notebooks, players and phones that lift the isolation of the user and helps hand held users see what’s in view.

The company has already tested out transparent AMOLEDs on a small scale with the IceTouch, a media player with a 2-inch touchscreen. Until now, such displays have often been cost-prohibitive due to the price of an AMOLED, but economies of scale have grown to make at least smaller screens reasonable. The IceTouch should sell in the US for about $378 within the first half of this year. However a Notebook with a transparent AMOLED screen could be expensive.

Samsung is also said to be looking to corner the transparent screen market with several new products coming with see-through displays in the next year. Allegedly, the firm is even considering breaking into new product categories with the clear screen tech. including a rumor of a transparent screen navigation device for cars that can be mounted on to the windshield.

However I’m not sure I would like a screen I could see through! At times clear screens could be hard to look at in a bright room, I wonder how this will feature any better. But, wait a second! The transparency could actually help kill the glaring, since the light entering the screen is not reflected. Voila~ !