Slashdot Mirror
Are the New Kindles Tablets-In-Training?
Hugh Pickens writes "TechNewsWorld reports that Amazon's new, slimmed-down Kindle devices are notable for several things, including upgrades to their experimental WebKit browser that makes it faster and easier to navigate, and the new 'article mode' feature extracts the main text-based content from Web pages for easier reading (as Safari does), suggesting the possibility that the Kindle may grow up to be a real tablet computer someday. Eventually, the tablet and e-reader categories 'are going to slam together,' says Rob Enderle, adding that they are 'held apart, largely because we don't yet have an affordable display that will do both tasks well.' One current problem 'is that TFT displays like the iPad uses suck for reading because they aren't outdoor viewable and are very power hungry. Display technologies like the Qualcomm Mirasol stuff will change this over the next 18 months, and by the end of next year — likely before — we'll begin to see converged devices.' Mirasol uses tiny mirrors, known as microelectronic machines, to create its display, which has the low power characteristics of E-Ink displays and the video-playing and color abilities of LCDs."
IPS displays are TFT displays. TFT means Thin Film Transistor. Before TFT displays (and in small LCDs), the pixels were/are activated by voltages which are delivered by a lattice of rows and columns directly. In TFT displays, there's a transistor at each pixel which amplifies the signal. Passive displays are slow because the voltages can't be increased without causing artifacts throughout the rows/columns. TFTs eliminate this problem. IPS is the way the liquid crystals are arranged and moved to change the display content. IPS means In-Plane Switching. The most common arrangement is TN, which means Twisted Nematic.
Because Mirasol is bistable (zero power on static images) and uses less power than a refreshing E-Ink display while playing video, while Pixel Qi uses at best a quarter of the power of a LCD all the time, even with the backlight off, since it's pretty much a transflective LCD. When the backlight's on, the Pixel Qi advantage is minimal. It is not revolutionary technology by any stretch.
The difference in power consumption is orders of magnitude. Since batteries lag behind pretty much all other tech these days, and LCD screens suck down massive amounts of power for both backlighting and the pixels themselves, true revolutions in battery life (like a week plus for a smartphone or tablet vs. maybe a day) will depend on Mirasol or related tech. There are a few other contenders, but Pixel Qi is not one. They do seem to have an excellent marketing department though, because the same misconceptions you have are quite widespread among people that should know better.