AMOLED is a display technology used in portable devices like mobile phones. Active-matrix OLED displays provide the same performance as their passive-matrix OLED counterparts, but they consume significantly less power.

This advantage makes active-matrix OLEDs well suited for portable electronics where battery power consumption is critical.



The oft-cited advantages of AMOLED displays – they work pixel-by-pixel, produce brighter colors (and deeper, near-perfect blacks), can consume less power, and are thinner and lighter than conventional LED models – helped fuel the emergence of the bigger, palm-size phone screens we know today. And as consumer interest in the technology has grown, laptop manufacturers have responded with new, high-resolution AMOLED-based models. For example, at CES 2019, Lenovo unveiled plans for a new 2-in-1 Yoga C730 laptop with a 15.6-inch 4K AMOLED display.



AMOLED, in turn, improves basic OLED technology for larger televisions, monitors and laptop displays by introducing a Thin Film Transistor (TFT) layer that enables greater control over the light emitted by the OLEDs. If TFT sounds familiar, it's because the technology -- which dedicates a current-controlling transistor to each pixel -- is also important in conventional LED LCD displays. The TFT layer provides an enhanced, "active matrix" of light control, accounting for the "AM" in AMOLED (although it’s important to note that even displays labeled simply “OLED” also likely feature an active matrix of some kind; it’s just not always mentioned).