Monday, January 11, 2010

"Up Close and Personal With the Pixel Qi Display":
Conventional LCD screens offer bright, glossy images but consume too much power. The images they display are also not visible in sunlight. It's one of the reasons electronic paper, a low-power black-and-white display that can be seen clearly outdoors during the day, has become a rage among e-book readers. Pixel Qi promises to bridge both worlds.

Pixel Qi's 3Qi display operates in three modes: a full-color LCD transmissive mode; a low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode; and a transflective mode, which makes the LCD display visible in sunlight.
The story includes detailed description and images of each mode. One important caveat:
But unlike an E Ink display, even in the reflective mode, Pixel Qi's display burns power. E Ink displays don't consume power while you are reading the text on the screen. It just draws power when you turn the page.

Pixel Qi's display keeps refreshing at 60 Hz per second so it can't offer the week-long battery life that an E Ink-based reader does...