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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
Page two of the article states:
"In dark conditions, light is directed onto the panel's modulators from LED lights at the edge of the panel."
Considering the vast majority of people are perfectly happy with 1920x1080 on a 50" screen, I doubt people will really care much if their 10" screen is any higher than that.
The BIGGEST complaint/problem with smartphones today is the lower battery life. If I could choose between doubling the resolution on my phone and doubling the battery life, I would choose the battery life in a heartbeat.
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.
Is it stupid to have to turn a light on to see at all?
You'd normally need a light to read a real book anyways, how is needing a light to read something on a different surface any different?
Maybe you like having tons of photons projected directly into your eyes, when your pupils are mostly dilated to accommodate reflect the total amount of light visible to you (which actually doesn't tend to average to much if the room is otherwise too dark to be able to read anything that isn't actually glowing, so your pupils are generally more dilated than they might need to be), but not everybody likes trying to read while staring into a flashlight.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The reason why Apple needs 2048x1536, and not, say, 1980x1200, is because with the latter they cannot easily scale up existing apps with a simple 2x factor.
(flexible layouts? what's that?)
This page explains near the end: http://www.mirasoldisplays.com/mobile-display-imod-technology
It's bistable, so it retains memory of the image without needing power (or only a little power), which is similar to e-ink.
But it switches much faster than e-ink, so it can do video, presumably consuming power for the regions which change.
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.