Finding a Display You Can Read in the Sun?

max3000 asks: "I'm currently building an embedded device that will be used outdoors, and the technology is pretty much nailed down at this point, except the display. Quite honestly, I'm confused and lost in all the display technologies out there: LCD (TFT, passive/active, and so forth), ChLCD, OLED, FED, AMLCD, EL, electrophoretic, ePaper like eInk, and more (some of which may overlap). Can you help a confused, fellow reader? What I need is (apparently) fairly complicated: an outdoor, sunlight-readable (at-a-glance readable, not squint-your-eyes readable), VGA/SVGA display. The display should have a 4-6 inch diagonal, capable of displaying at least 16 color grayscale, and it should be based on a technology with a roadmap to color in 2-3 years time. If not driveable directly from a PC, the display should come with a development kit that is." What small displays are out there that can meet these specifications?

Comments

Evident in the Palm and phones

[jbarr]

"Back in the day" my Pilot 1000, Palm iii, and Palm Vx PDA's all had monochrome, backlit displays that were very viewable in the dark, in normal office lighting, and in bright sunlight. No, they weren't color, but I NEVER had to worry about being able to read the screens. Now, over a decade later we have PDA's that rival small laptops, have amazing storage capacities, execute applications unheard of in the past,but are COMPLETELY USELESS in bright sunlight. Despite all of the advances, I sometimes long for the days of simpler designs. I would personally love to see the Palm Vx resurrected with some of today's features but a high resolution monochrome screen.

And the same holds true for cell phones. I have a typical LG phone from Verizon (provided by work, do I have no choice in the model) and it has a great battery life, the features are decent, and the voice quality is better than most, but in the sinlight, the internal screen is completely unusable. The monochrome external screen is amazingly clear in sunlight, but it is useless in that it doesn't match the internal screen. Thank, God for speed dials.