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Amazon Shuts Down Liquavista, a Screen Technology Company It Had Acquired From Samsung in 2013 (the-digital-reader.com)

Posted by msmash on from the end-of-road dept.

Liquavista, a screen tech company Amazon acquired five years ago, has shut down. Rumblings of Liquavista's potential closure have been bouncing around the e-reader community for more than six months. It remains unclear if Liquavista's work has been brought inside Amazon and moved to other parts of the organization, or if it was shut down entirely. Amazon declined to release further details. From a report: Launched in 2006 as a spin off from Philips, Liquavista had been developing a unique type of screen tech that was based on running an electric current through a liquid. This is called electrowetting technology, which is a fancy way of saying that each pixel in a Liquavista screen contained 3 liquids (red, green, blue), and that the color shown by a pixel depended on the amount of power fed into each liquid. [...] The screens were originally being developed as a solution to the battery life issue. Mobile battery life was terrible back in the pre-iPad, pre-iPhone, and pre-netbook era, and people were willing to pay a premium for a screen which used less power than typical LCD screens.

24 comments

  1. We'll probably never know why by ffkom · · Score: 1

    The saddest thing about such technologies disappearing is that the public usually never gets to know the true reasons why this happened. Actual technical obstacles? Not profitable enough to manufacture? Lifetime too long or too short? Some awkward environmental impact? Or just some product manager losing interest?

    1. Re:We'll probably never know why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Likely just a shit product. Otherwise there would have been no reason for Philips to spin it off and get sold to Amazon.

    2. Re: We'll probably never know why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These are rumors

    3. Re:We'll probably never know why by Luthair · · Score: 1

      Won't they need to provide some information to shareholders?

    4. Re:We'll probably never know why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No.

  2. Or you could just read 1 paragraph and know. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "The screens were originally being developed as a solution to the battery life issue. Mobile battery life was terrible back in the pre-iPad, pre-iPhone, and pre-netbook era, and people were willing to pay a premium for a screen which used less power than typical LCD screens."

    Reading strikes again.

    1. Re:Or you could just read 1 paragraph and know. by ffkom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Mobile battery life is still terrible, and their screens are still the largest contributors to their power consumption. If a Mirasol or Liquavista display could remove that factor, it would be a great selling point for a high-end mobile phone.

    2. Re:Or you could just read 1 paragraph and know. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The point was that (O)LED tech that outperforms this on both sides got cheaper. Exterior displays on the bottoms of ocean liners? VR scuba masks? IDK.

      I hope your investment pans out, kid. Good luck.
         

    3. Re:Or you could just read 1 paragraph and know. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Name a single product that the average consumer would have heard of that used these screens in 2006.

      Oh right, you can't because they never got anything off the ground. AKA it was likely a shit product otherwise Philips would never have spun it off.

    4. Re:Or you could just read 1 paragraph and know. by HarrySquatter · · Score: 2

      Except that Mirasol displays were crap. To quote Wikipedia:

      Mirasol screens were only able to produce 60 Hz video but it quickly drained the battery. Devices that used the screen have colors that look washed out, so the technology never saw mainstream support.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Yeah, sounds like a real winner of a technology.

  3. Battery life was fine back then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Mobile battery life was terrible back in the pre-iPad, pre-iPhone, and pre-netbook era

    No, it wasn't.

    You had mulitple days on standby, even a week.

    1. Re:Battery life was fine back then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably talking about "screen on time" battery life, and of color backlit screens. The transflective B/W LCD in your nokia does not count.

      Backlit color screens of this era were only just starting to use LED backlight, most were still CCFL or electroluminescent panels. Both technologies requiring inverters to boost the voltage into the 90-110vac range for electroluminescent and several thousand volts for CCFL

  4. battery life still sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    there are still people who would pay a premium for a longer-lasting screen

    (I still miss pixel xi)

  5. Still holding out hope for ACEP or ClearInk by mark-t · · Score: 1
    ACEP

    Clearink

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:Still holding out hope for ACEP or ClearInk by mark-t · · Score: 1

      I gave the wrong link for ClearInk. This is the one I meant to paste/

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    2. Re:Still holding out hope for ACEP or ClearInk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm still waiting for a good sunlight readable display with saturated color and good contrast.
      The transflective have all but disappeared.

    3. Re:Still holding out hope for ACEP or ClearInk by mark-t · · Score: 1

      Both ClearInk and ACEP appear to promise that. 2019 will be a good year, methinks.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  6. Possibly Became Obsolete by TomR+teh+Pirate · · Score: 1

    I remember reading something about this kind of technology several years ago. The advantages were massive improvement in battery life (presumably before OLEDs became widely available) and its disadvantage was that the screen could only manage about 30 FPS before smearing would set in. I cannot remember what was said about its brightness. With OLEDs out there, power consumption has dropped considerably. It's not great, but visually it's so superior to anything else that people will put up with the still-inferior battery performance.

    1. Re: Possibly Became Obsolete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I recall an experiment where they essentially overclocked this to get some really absurdly high resolution and shutter speed.

  7. Possibly Became slow. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If one's using it for video, yeah. If one's using it for text and diagrams, then no.

    1. Re: Possibly Became slow. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed. I think the purpose was to develop next gen video tech and then combine it with other functions. The developers is very active in feature development and quality improvement

  8. e-ink info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really nice to see R&D into alternate display types. There are so many different technologies losing Liquavista doesn't seem that bad in context they probably sucked in some unfixable way.

    https://www.e-ink-info.com/

  9. Sounds like Qualcomm by Snotnose · · Score: 2

    Some 15-20 years ago they bought a company with a display based on, I think, butterfly wings (it's been a while, forgive my memory). I worked there at the time, and a friend of mine ended up software lead on it. If everything was good the tech worked very well, you could see your phone in daylight with less battery than using it in a darkened room.

    But

    Key phrase: "When things were good". When things weren't good you couldn't see the screen for shit. Go out into the sunlight for that nice, bright display? The screen warmed up and all those butterfly cells (or whatever) quit working. Voltage/current changed? Same thing. Go into a darkened room? Regular screens worked fine, who needs fancy ass butterfly wings.

    I could google the name of that but, hell I'm not doing anything right now. Mirasol. Google that, found a link to "what went wrong" but too tired to figure out how to turn it into an HTML link.

    Funny thing is, that link says video performance sucked. I assume that was Mediaflow, which if memory serves was a year or two after Mirasol crapped out. The real problem was that Mirasol flat out didn't work outside of the lab.

  10. Competition with other companies by Elina_williams · · Score: 1

    For the past decade or so Liquavista has been developing a low-powered screen tech to replace LCD screens. Which became harmful to the growth of the company. It could not stand along with its competitors like Acer, Apple etc. Visit http://www.acersupportnumber.c...