Hitachi Displays Ltd. today announced a 4.5-inch high-definition display for smartphones, developed by utilizing the In-plane Switching (IPS) tecnology.

The IPS LCD display are featuring a wide viewing angle, high contrast and minimal color variation.

Hitachi's new LCD display has better charatceristics than the Retina display of an iPhone 4, since it features an 1,100:1 contrast ratio and 500 nits of brightness coming from a LED backlight. The resolution of the LCD panel is 329ppi, and the size of its subpixel is 25.7 x 777µm. It has a 70% color gamut on NTSC standards. Hitachi has not disclosed the power consumption of the display.

The newly developed LCD will be showcased at the 2011 SID show that will be held in Los Angeles, Calif. May 15 through July 20.

The IPS technology is a TFT liquid crystal display technology of the In-Plane-Switching method with behaviors that differ from those of typical TFT liquid crystal displays of the TN or other methods. The technology was released in 1995 and commercialized in 1996 by Hitachi, Ltd., evolving through Super-IPS to Advanced-Super IPS, IPS-Pro and then to IPS-Pro-Prolleza. The IPS technology, whereby liquid crystal display molecules spin around on a plane parallel to a TFT substrate in the In-Plane-Switching mode where the movement of these molecules is very simple, features a wide viewing angle, excellent color reproducibility, and high response speed in halftone processing.

Hitachi Displays has devised IPS LCD as the optimum technology for the expectations created by the increasing high resolution of images. Its use has expanded to digital single-lens reflex cameras and mobile phones.

The IPS technology has significantly resolved the viewing angle issues of liquid crystal displays that had affected the contrast and color tone depending on the viewing angle.