First 6-inch 4K AMOLED panel shown off

The latest generation of QHD displays may already be verging on the point of overkill for smartphones but the nature of the spec sheet wars makes it seem almost inevitable that someone is going to launch a 4K display smartphone at some point in the future. We may have taken one step closer to that eye-popping future today, as Everdisplay has been showing off its 6-inch 4K AMOLED prototype.

Currently, the highest density AMOLED panel in production measures 5.1-inches and has a density of 557 pixels per inch (PPI). Everdisplay’s 6-inch 4K display offers a crystal clear density of 734 PPI. This might seem unnecessary for smartphones, but small ultra-high resolution panels do have useful applications for virtual reality hardware, and this is the market that Everydisplay is after with its 6-inch 4K display.

Although this may be the first 4K AMOLED panel that we have seen in the flesh, it is not the first 4K smartphone sized display that we’ve seen. Back in April, Sharp announced its 4K IGZO LCD panel, which measures 5.5-inches in size and packs in an incredible 806 PPI. The ZTE Star 3 is rumored to be the first smartphone to actually make use of this or a similar panel.

Everdisplay isn’t just focused on VR technology though. The company is already producing a 5-inch 720p AMOLED display for smartphones and is developing 5.5 and 6 inch panels along with a circular 1.4-inch 400×400 AMOLED display for the wearables market.

There’s no word from Everdisplay on a price range of availability of its 4K AMOLED panel yet. Given its prototype status, we are unlikely to see it show up in any products for at least another year. In the future though, 4K may sound like an archaic resolution when compared to Samsung’s plans for 11K display technology.