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Qualcomm's Butterfly Wing Display Gets Nearer
holy_calamity writes "Technology Review has an update on a screen technology from Qualcomm called Mirasol that delivers LCD-like colors and video but sips power like e-ink. Demonstration Android tablets with 5.7 inch Mirasol displays apparently held up well in bright light and were responsive enough for gaming. Qualcomm are in the process of building a $1 billion new factory to make the screens, which should appear in devices from phone and tablet makers next year."
Between this and a couple of other low power passive displays working their way to market, one of them is going to succeed. And change everything.
The display is one of the biggest power hogs right now. The radios in cell phones are also pretty hungry but having an always on display will be game changing. Then when you consider the work on various memory techs that eliminate idle current and the lifetime issues with flash, things are going to continue to be very interesting in the tech world.
Democrat delenda est
This is great! I keep a Sony Reader, since it accepts SD cards, loaded with survival manuals, medical books, car/motorcycle repair manuals, only problem is most of the files are in PDF format, which the device isn't too great at displaying. Combine this screen in a device with large storage and battery, solar charging option and I'm all set Unless Ron Paul continues his trend, he's in second in Iowa, then I'll have no need for such a thing.
The troubles of first world countries; where changing everything is equivalent to lowering your electricity bill.
Am I the only one who wants backlight in his tablet? E-Ink is all nice and good, but its stupid to have to turn the lights on to read from an electronic device...
They're just now building the factory, and you expect the product to be in devices next year? That would be the smoothest production bring-up in history. Maybe in 2013.
The Mirasol display technology is pretty cool.
http://www.mirasoldisplays.com/mobile-display-imod-technology
Apple is working on a high resolution (2048x1536) tablet display. I would guess they are aware of this technology. The article indicates yields are a problem so a 2048x1536 display is probably a ways away. Which will be more disruptive to the market, the leap in resolution or battery life?
Make it large enough to handle textbook content presented at a readable size (typically letter-sized pages), and I'd be all over it, as long as it allowed me to upload my own pdf's to it, and, perhaps no less important, as long as it wasn't priced ridiculously high. And yeah, I know there's some e-ink readers oout there with displays nearly that big, but the current state of affairs with eink displays totally blows. Page refreshes are so slow that I'd rather carry 20 lbs worth of textbooks than try to use an eink reader for anything other than the reading of fiction.
A 14" screen would be ideal... although with a respectable resolution, a 10-11" one might also be able to suffice.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I can't wait for this tech to get into tablets. Just a few of the advantages I'm expecting (and here's hoping there will be no disappointments)
1. I stare at an LCD screen all day, and I really detest the backlight. This is what prevents me from reading on a "tablet". Mirasol will fix that.
2. The Kindle's e-ink display, even though it didn't have colour, was simply amazing. However, the slow refresh rates combined with the lack of colour, made it too special purpose. Mirasol fixes all that, allowing for a general purpose tablet + e-reader and I can't imagine why that wouldn't succeed.
3. The paper like effect (which I assume Mirasol will have), will be so much easier on the eyes - meaning less eye strain. Given a choice between ruining my eye sight and enduring bad colour, I'll choose bad colour anytime.
4. We can go back to the look & feel of paper without the associated wastage (trees cut down etc. etc). One "electronic book" to substitute them all.
5. A battery life comparable in the kindle range instead of the lcd range would be an added bonus, but not a deal breaker.
6. Resolution however is important. I assume that high res screens will be available.
7. Some form of built-in illumination in the absence of ambient light.
What does the article mean by e-ink like power consumption? I can't tell if this technology requires power to remain in a given state, or whether it can be static like e-ink. Although the low power consumption of e-ink displays is largely due to their lack of a backlight, being able to display static content with 0 power consumption is really one of the coolest parts about e-ink tech.
I read the article but it didn't seem to answer this, do any readers know? If it could display static content for free then that would be incredibly awesome.
Or maybe they will retro-fit a current factory with sup-prime equipment while they build a new factory with the proper equipment for a higher output for future orders?
We've been hearing about this technology for years now, and unfortunately it's taken it so long to get to market that I think they've missed their market window.
Smartphones and tablets, spurred on in large part by Apple, have entered into an arms race of display quality with consumer displays the likes has never been seen before. The sort of displays our mobile devices have make our computer monitors look shameful, with AMOLED pushing the boundaries in terms of true blacks and contrast ratios and viewing angles, and ever-higher resolutions pushing DPIs to the boundaries of human sight. Most LCD IPS displays, which are the cream of the crop for desktop monitors and better than any flat-screen TV, are really just average at best these days in the mobile world.
The Mirasol displays, at least the ones that have been demoed, have never been the highest quality displays. Their two huge advantages are daylight-readability and low power-consumption. Those are two very positive traits, but at this stage, I don't really foresee anything outside of a niche market giving up ordinary-circumstance display quality for these.
Make it large enough to handle textbook content presented at a readable size (typically letter-sized pages), and I'd be all over it, as long as it allowed me to upload my own pdf's to it, and, perhaps no less important, as long as it wasn't priced ridiculously high. And yeah, I know there's some e-ink readers oout there with displays nearly that big, but the current state of affairs with eink displays totally blows. Page refreshes are so slow that I'd rather carry 20 lbs worth of textbooks than try to use an eink reader for anything other than the reading of fiction.
Actually, full letter size is generally far too large. Take a standrd hardback book, then pare down the margin space you no longer need (and which is to be replaced by screen bezel, not empty pixels), and you've got a very well established field-tested form factor to work with.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
As described, I'd expect poor image quality for three independent reasons.
First, the cavities have just two reflecting surfaces. The interference design may work wonders on butterfly wings, but they have many reflective layers, not just two. With just two, the wavelength specificity of the reflected light will be poor: you won't be able to make a bright green spot, merely a greenish spot.
Second, each subpixel can reflect only a particular colour (presumably they'll go for red, green and blue subpixels.) So if for a pixel all the subpixels are turned on, than means that 1/3 of the red light falling on the pixel will be reflected (i.e. from the red subpixel), 1/3 of the green light, and 1/3 of the blue light. This means that if we try to set the pixel as bright as possible (all subpixels on) we'll still only get a medium grey, not white.
Third, each subpixel is either on or off, so each pixel can only display 8 colours. To get better colour reproduction will require dithering, which requires very many very small pixels to not visibly affect image quality.
So, from the description I'm expecting a greyish display with washed out dithered colours. The tiny photo they include in the article shows considerably better quality than I'm expecting. (I really want to see a close up, high quality photo of the display showing a challenging image.) Are there reasons why my objections above are not valid?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
that the hardware guy can usually get something, no matter how bad, to appear to work. All of the software guy created hardware I've seen could barely catch fire.
This technology uses "interferometric modulators", which I cannot hear in anything but Marvin the Martian's voice.
They actually announced the factory back in January. One would assume construction started around then, allowing them to meet a 2012 production deadline.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-03/qualcomm-to-invest-about-1-billion-in-taiwan-display-plant-ministry-says.html
Any idea how much would the displays cost us ? GE some time back invented methods to manufacture OLED in a cheaper way http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4214335/Solid-state-lighting-coming-into-focus-semiconductor?pageNumber=2 but we don't see the LED screens costs to be down. Looks like technology advancement and product pricing are not directly proportional ;-)
About a lot of things, actually.
Better yet, get rid of the screen bezel and build a collapsible handle system into the back, so your hand can be behind it, yet still hold it securely. The bezel on my iPad strikes me as a complete waste of space. I might feel better about it if there had been a camera in my gen 1, but there isn't... the bezel just makes the thing so big I can quite get my hand around it without an uncomfortable stretch. We'll have a Kindle Fire in the house tomorrow, looking forward to reading on something that actually fits in my hand.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's made of tiny monochromatic mirrors that reflect or black out specific colors. It's relies on the number of mirrors per pixel sub-color to determine color intensity. While I suspect they are grouping the sub-colors per pixel right next to each other if they didn't... if every sub-pixel on this display was more or less a group of RGB each... (not likely since humans are more sensitive to certain colors) then the display would be capable or variable resolution. More resolution the closer you get to the pure RGB colors or black and white. So text on the screen can potentially be at a higher resolution while colors pictures appear at lower resolutions. This is such an advantage I suspect the research is focused on interleaved color manufacturing. While the colors on the screen won't be perfect RGB they will be a balanced matrix of colors. Addressing is the only technical challenge which would mean three different color address buses for three different screen colors. One color, I think blue being a reduced resolution for a smaller palette. That's a lot info to be transmitted but fortunately the display is it's own memory.
So to sum it up pictures at normal resolution, black/white text at 1000 times the resolution and nominal color text at 100 times the resolution.
I want one....
If bezel width were determined by mechanical reasons, the bezel wouldn't need to be any wider than an iPhone bezel...
If we use an eink-like display with 30fps frequency would it still use less power?
they'd need to do a dead zone around the edges for touch control, too.
but qualcomm will just build the displays, it will be up to device manufacturers to actually put them to use.
what this will do, is that it will push other display tech to cheaper regions.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
What are the 3 scariest things to a SysAdmin?
1. An Electrical Engineer with a software patch.
2. A Programmer with a soldering iron.
3. A user with an idea.
Great civilizations have lived and died on false theories. Don't mess up mine with a few facts.
Full letter size has never been done, at least in a 'modern' tablet, so I think your supposition that it's 'far too large' lacks data to back it up.
I know several business folks who would pay much more than current iPad prices for a tablet that would show a full page at 8.5x11 including margins (think contracts with handwritten changes).
We tried iPads but the screen is too small for old guys with bad eyesight. We've costed out the time and materials that a satisfactorily-sized tablet would replace and found that the cost *just in paper, ink, and time spent by secretaries printing & walking to and from the printer* (i.e. excluding the cost of having secretaries type emails, which we assumed would not change) and came up with $2,300 per year.
So, yeah, I call bullshit. Tiny screens may be awesome for you when you read Piers Anthony novels, but it's not sufficient for a small but significant part of the potential tablet market.
LCD != LED