I was driving in to work today and was thinking about the upcoming announcement. I was adjusting my FM transmitter that I use to pipe my scanner audio into my car stereo (A Belkin Tunecast 3, don't buy one...it's crap) and took a quick glance at the display. Then it hit me. Instead of using a monochrome LCD with an LED backlight, why not use an OLED display?
This would eliminate what I think I see as one of the more common gripes about scanner displays, regardless of manufacturer. Some people like blue, some like green, some like orange...some would rather customize it. I think this would be the most universal solution to the problem.
Uniden is already using one in their new Uniden DECT3080-2 cordless phones (at least it looks like an OLED display).
Discussion points:
1.) It's cheap. Come on...that cordless phone set is $110US. And that's for hardware that contains TWO displays. You can't tell me that the parts for a driver chip and OLED display module are that much more expensive than the monochrome display in the current 3/996. And since they've got something similar deployed in one of their product lines, it likely wouldn't take much work to adapt a similar application to the scanner.
2.) OLED is generally more battery efficient than LED backlit displays. The beauty is that the display IS the backlight. No more need for a discrete backlight for the display that drains the juice rapidly from the power supply. The display is only lighting the segments that need to be lit. Also, because of the fact that the display is the light, I find it much easier to read my FM transmitter's display in all varieties of lighting conditions, versus the conventional LCD display of my scanner.
3.) Customizable display. Here's where I think Uniden could really kick the pants off the competition. So GRE has a discrete LED on the housing as a custom message indicator, right? Why not give the user the ability to customize the display? Even if you were to take the current 396's display layout, it would be so much better if you added color. Imagine if you're scanning multiple types of frequencies: you could have blue channel text for police, red for fire, white for HAM radio, yellow for weather alerts...see where I'm going with this? Don't like colored text? Use black text and change the background color instead. You don't need a separate LED to differentiate...the display does it for you. Oh, and as far as the lit keypad...you could have tri-color LEDs there too, so that the user has a preference with that as well (I think white backlit keys would look slick, but you may not).
So, what do you guys think? I'm throwing this out there now, because I think that if we're truly going to see new hardware from Uniden in the near- to mid-term future Paul might be able to take it to the design group as an idea. Remember, a lot of product development comes from feedback from focus groups, and Paul basically has one big focus group right here.
-- B
This would eliminate what I think I see as one of the more common gripes about scanner displays, regardless of manufacturer. Some people like blue, some like green, some like orange...some would rather customize it. I think this would be the most universal solution to the problem.
Uniden is already using one in their new Uniden DECT3080-2 cordless phones (at least it looks like an OLED display).
Discussion points:
1.) It's cheap. Come on...that cordless phone set is $110US. And that's for hardware that contains TWO displays. You can't tell me that the parts for a driver chip and OLED display module are that much more expensive than the monochrome display in the current 3/996. And since they've got something similar deployed in one of their product lines, it likely wouldn't take much work to adapt a similar application to the scanner.
2.) OLED is generally more battery efficient than LED backlit displays. The beauty is that the display IS the backlight. No more need for a discrete backlight for the display that drains the juice rapidly from the power supply. The display is only lighting the segments that need to be lit. Also, because of the fact that the display is the light, I find it much easier to read my FM transmitter's display in all varieties of lighting conditions, versus the conventional LCD display of my scanner.
3.) Customizable display. Here's where I think Uniden could really kick the pants off the competition. So GRE has a discrete LED on the housing as a custom message indicator, right? Why not give the user the ability to customize the display? Even if you were to take the current 396's display layout, it would be so much better if you added color. Imagine if you're scanning multiple types of frequencies: you could have blue channel text for police, red for fire, white for HAM radio, yellow for weather alerts...see where I'm going with this? Don't like colored text? Use black text and change the background color instead. You don't need a separate LED to differentiate...the display does it for you. Oh, and as far as the lit keypad...you could have tri-color LEDs there too, so that the user has a preference with that as well (I think white backlit keys would look slick, but you may not).
So, what do you guys think? I'm throwing this out there now, because I think that if we're truly going to see new hardware from Uniden in the near- to mid-term future Paul might be able to take it to the design group as an idea. Remember, a lot of product development comes from feedback from focus groups, and Paul basically has one big focus group right here.
-- B
