The Helmholtz-Kohlraush effect is a visual characteristic that humans perceive color having higher saturation as brighter. In the proposed method, the pixel value is reduced by increasing the saturation while maintaining the hue and value of HSV color space, resulting in power saving of OLED displays since the power consumption of OLED displays directly depends on the pixel value. Although the luminance decreases, brightness of image is maintained by the Helmholtz-Kohlraush effect. In order to suppress excessive increase of saturation, the increase factor of saturation is reduced with an increase in brightness. As maximum increase factor of saturation, kMAX, increases, more power is reduced but unpleasant color change takes place. From the subjective evaluation experiment with the 23 test images consisting of skin, natural and non-natural images, it is found that kMAX is less than 2.0 to suppress the unpleasant color change. When kMAX is 2.0, the power saving is 8.0%. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is confirmed by using a smart phone having 4.5 inches diagonal RGB AMOLED display.

Battery life and outdoor visibility are two of the most important features for mobile applications today. It is desirable to achieve both low power consumption and excellent outdoor visibility on the display device at the same time. We have previously reported a new RGBW method to realize low power consumption and high luminance with high image quality. In this paper, the basic concept of a new RGBW calculation utilizing an “Extended HSV color space” model is described, and also its performance, such as low power consumption, color image reproducibility and outdoor visibility is presented. The new method focuses on the luminance-increase ratio by means of a White signal for the display image data, and derives the appropriate RGBW signal and backlight PWM signal for every frame period. This dynamically controlled system solves the problems of conventional RGBW systems, and realizes the same image quality as a corresponding RGB display. In order to quantify its color image reproducibility, a spectroscopic measurement has been completed using the Macbeth Color Chart. In addition, the advantages of high luminance by the new RGBW method is described. The converted tone curve with an RGBW method provides very high luminance, such as 1,000cd/m2, and improved outdoor visibility. Finally, a newly developed 4.38-inch full-HD (1,080 × 1,920) 503ppi prototype LCD utilizing this new RGBW technology is described.