The Vision Pro 2 could gain this huge upgrade to visuals

By Willow Roberts July 31, 2024

Apple Vision Pro display model. — Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends

The tandem OLED technology used in the 2024 iPad Pro models could be used in a future Vision Pro. LG and Samsung have prototyped micro versions of the tandem displays, essentially shrinking them down for use in headsets such as the Vision Pro.

A report, originating from the Korean site Sisa Journal as picked up by MacRumors, mentions that it’s unknown whether LG and Samsung are planning to mass produce these displays right now.

Recommended Videos

They’re probably a little too advanced to be used in the next Meta Quest anyway, and since Apple isn’t planning a Vision Pro 2 model until at least 2026, the companies still have plenty of time to get production going if they want to.

Tandem OLED displays are super bright and power-efficient because they use two OLED panels stacked on top of each other to harness the light from both.

The results with the iPad Pro (2024) are striking, improving not only the brightness but also the saturation, contrast, and viewing angle. In theory, this double-panel approach should also help with the other main drawback of normal OLED screens — burn-in.

Because heat is the main cause behind burn-in, the two panels combat the problem by running cooler than a single panel would and combining their output to achieve the correct results. This means that tandem OLED displays should have a longer lifespan than regular OLED.

The latest iPad Pro is enjoying all of these benefits right now, and the Vision Pro 2 could enjoy them as well if this tech ends up inside the headset instead of the current 4K micro-OLED displays from Sony.

Topics

Computing Writer

Willow Roberts has been a Computing Writer at Digital Trends for a year and has been writing for about a decade. She has a…

Computing

The Apple Vision Pro can now be controlled only by your mind

Mark has ALS but can use the Vision Pro via Synchron's Stentrode.

The Apple Vision Pro is already incredibly easy to use, largely thanks to its lack of controllers. You just look at a control and tap your index finger to your thumb to select.

But hand gestures aren’t always easy or possible for the millions of people worldwide who have paralysis of the upper limbs. Synchron recently announced a spatial computing breakthrough that lets users of the Stentrode BCI (brain computer interface) implant control an Apple Vision Pro.

Computing

The Vision Pro still has a chance at success

Apple Vision Pro

There's no doubt that the Vision Pro hasn't exactly been a bestseller. A new report from market analysts indicates that fewer than 500,000 Vision Pro headsets will be sold by the end of the year.

However, the report also offers some good news for the future of the platform. According to Bloomberg, citing data from market analyst IDC, Apple is planning a cheaper version of the Vision Pro in 2025, and that could be the company's ticket to a much more popular device, predicting that it could double the sales of the Vision Pro next year.

Gaming

Apple’s gaming push is heating up faster than you think

Frostpunk 2 runs on a MacBook.

A few years back, I was invited to meet with Apple about its new push into gaming. The company wouldn’t show me a flashy new product to enable that. Instead, it showed me something more modest: No Man’s Sky running smoothly on a MacBook. It looked great, but it wasn’t exactly earth-shattering. It was an independent game from 2016 running on a laptop as well as it had already been running for years on other PCs. I got the sense that I wasn’t there to cover a big development in tech, but rather to see a proof of concept that had bigger plans attached.

Years later, those plans are coming into focus even if they still aren’t fully realized yet. I recently attended a repeat of that showcase, only this time I wasn’t just watching an eight-year-old game running on a laptop. I demoed several games, including brand new ones, this time running on a range of devices including the MacBook Air M3 and a 13” iPad Pro M4. While we’re still a long ways away from the App Store being up to snuff with Steam on Windows, I’m starting to see where gaming on iOS is headed -- and Apple is getting there faster than I expected.
Growing gaming
During my recent session with Apple, I’d get to see and play several games running across iPhone, iPad, and Macbooks. Some of those experiences are more exciting for Apple than for casual players. It’s neat that Resident Evil 7 can run well on an iPhone, but that’s not so surprising when I already know that the much more recent Resident Evil 4 does too. I’m happy to see games like Control and Valheim looking great, but those are existential wins for Apple as it seeks more partners to expand its gaming efforts. I don’t imagine that gamers are jumping to play games that have been out for years on an Apple device (and according to reports, they very much aren’t yet).