Japanese Display Inc., a joint venture bringing together some of Japan's biggest household names, has unveiled what is possibly the smallest 4K display.
With a screen diagonal of 12.1 inches, it will pave the way for tablets and laptops with 4K displays although the usefulness of such a screen is still debatable.
Panasonic was the first one to launch a 4K tablet at CES in January but that had a massive 20-inch display. In comparison, the screen, which is currently on show at JDI's booth at the FPD International 2013 expo in Japan, has a pixel density of 365ppi and is less than 2mm thick.
It uses a low temperature poly silicon technology (LTPS), which allows it to consume a mere 3.6W at 500cd/m2 and keep the dead-band, the unused bezel area, to a mere 2mm (6.8mm at the bottom).
Mass effect
In November 2012, JDI demoed a 5-inch full-HD panel, one which was the precursor of the panel that made its way in the Sony Xperia Z and the Xperia Z1. This week's announcement demonstrates that the company has managed to iron out challenges linked with mass producing bigger displays with much higher resolutions.
The group was established in April 2012 and regrouped the LCD operations of Hitachi, Sony and Toshiba with a significant amount of money from the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan.
It's worth noting that JDI has close ties with Apple being one of the screen suppliers for the Apple iPhone 5 which means that this display may well appear in the follow-up to the company's Retina Display devices (iPad or MacBook Pro).
- Check out our hands-on review of the Apple iPad Mini 2
