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Pixel Qi Says Next-Gen Displays Meet or Beat iPad 3 Screen Quality
New submitter seb42 writes "Pixel Qi announces new screens that can match or exceed the image quality of the screen in the iPad3, with a very low power mode that runs at a full 100X power reduction from the peak power consumed by the iPad3 screen. Hope the Google tablet has this tech." The claims are pretty bold, and specific: "We have a new architecture that matches the resolution of the ipad3 screen, and its full image quality including matching or exceeding contrast, color saturation, the viewing angle and so forth with massive power savings."
Well, except for having ridiculous (and I mean that in a good way) pixel density, that's exactly what Pixel Qi displays to date have all been about -- with one caveat.
The problem, with a conventional LCD, is the color filters -- each one blocks out perhaps 70% of white light (you can block more for better gamut, less for worse gamut, but reduced light consumption). That means you get, at best, 30% albedo for your display in a white state, and that assumes your filter doesn't cost any extra on the second pass (a theoretical brickwall filter) -- real filters will lose some. So, ditch the color filters and win, but this makes your display black-and-white. Pixel Qi gets best-of-both-worlds capabilities by generating colors in the backlight (using a diffraction grating), allowing low-res (since you need multiple subpixels to make one pixel) backlit color display, or high-res (1 subpixel = 1 pixel) reflective grayscale display. That's the catch -- of course, with a powerful enough backlight, you can still make the colors shine through in daylight (though they will be washed out by the reflective light, reducing saturation), but then you don't get the power savings.
There are a few examples of this screen out there but I think the reason it's so hard to get a hold of is that the current Pixel Qi screen, well, kind of sucks. The color saturation, contrast, etc just aren't that great. Turns out the screen isn't that good at any of the things it was hyped to be: good color inside, good b&w outside.