Sony has announced their newest Palm Powered PDA that will be available in the Japanese market only. It is a fairly large, multimedia PDA. It also is the first PDA that uses an Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) screen. This is a new, thinner, more power-friendly color screen.

The Sony CLIE VZ90 has an interesting form-factor. It is a tablet disign. It is larger than the Sony CLIE UX50 and uses a slider design. This is not like the slider on the palmOne Tungsten T3, but rather a set of controls that slides out from underneath the display.

Here are the specs:

• 480-by-320-pixel display, 3.8" diagonal
• Palm Garnet (OS 5.2.1 Japanese version)
• 128 MHz Sony Handheld Engine
• 64 MB of RAM, 40 MB available to the user
• 128 MB of ROM, 95 MB available to the user
• Compact Flash II Slot (handles both memory cards and peripherals)
• Sony Memory Stick PRO slot
• Built-in Wi-Fi (no Bluetooth)

The Sony CLIE VZ90 will be onsale in Japan (only) on September 25, 2004 for 89,800 Yen (about $820).

ClieClub in Japan has a nice pictorial of the VZ90.

Sony Begins Mass Production of Full-Color Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) Displays

New Thin Screens for Mobile Devices Realize CRT-Quality Picture Clarity and Color Gamut

This month, Sony Corporation will commence mass production of a full-color Organic Light Emitting Diode (hereafter OLED) display, which will be first implemented in the new Sony CLIÉ ‘PEG-VZ90’ personal entertainment handheld (also announced today for the Japanese market).

OLED display is a self-luminous display that does not require a back-light, offering high contrast ratio, a quick response time and wide viewing angle—all in a package slimmer than current LCD modules.  To enhance this display, Sony has employed its unique Super Top Emission  technology for outstanding brightness and greater color gamut.  These translate into image quality and clarity that could previously viewed only on CRT (cathode ray tube) displays. 

The new 3.8-inch (or 9.7 cm) screen measures 2.14 mm thin, and makes it possible for users to enjoy a variety of high-quality content such as TV programs and digital still images on mobiles products such as the new CLIÉ VZ90 handheld without compromising on the viewing experience. 

Key Features

1. Super Top Emission
As the name implies, Super Top Emission leads light emission from the upper side of the organic material, realizing a brightness level of 150cd per square meter. Also, by optimizing the thickness of the organic layer for each of the color components, RGB, Sony realized multi-interference of reflecting light.  Additionally, with the cavity multi-reflection interference structure which enables emission of colors with high purity, bright and brilliant color gamut comparable to that of CRT is realized
  

2. Excellence in response time, viewing angle and contrast ratio
As OLED works with self-luminous organic materials, it has outstanding response time, without producing any afterimage even when displaying moving images (movies). Also with wide viewing angle and contrast ratio as high as 1000:1, high quality images can be realized on mobile products which are used in various occasions.

Main specifications for OLED display panel introduced in Clie PEG-VZ90:

*NTSC = TV signal standard used in Japan, North America and Central & South America.