Hands-on With Pixel Qi Screens In Full Sunlight 87
griffjon writes with this drool-inducing bit, describing a "side-by-side comparison of the OLPC's screen and an Acer with the new Pixel Qi screen installed, both of course sharing Mary Lou Jepsen's screen technology: 'The XO's dual mode screen still rules in terms of pixel resolution at 1200 x 900 vs. the Acer's 1024 x 600. It was amazing to see Windows 7, Amazon Kindle software, the New York Times web site and a QuickTime video in direct sunlight. Shades of gray and some color tints are visible. Besides the XOs and e-ink based Kindle ereaders, no other color screen device I own can be seen as clearly in sunlight. Not even the famed iPad. In the video, you can see that at a certain angle where line of sight and sun are aligned, the new Pixel Qi screen glows as if backlit!'"
Re:Outside, leave the laptop at home (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why did you have to trail behind the car, why not just sit in the passenger seats?
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Rover is/was a car manufacturer.
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If you're outside, you should, you know, be outside, doing outsidey kinds of things.
Man , please look at the potential rather than just immediately pigeonholing these type of devices as things that cross social boundaries that shouldn't be crossed. I for one read books in the park and maybe in 20 years time I won't need to lug around a 1000 page novel when I'm only going to be reading 1 or two pages in a lunchtime; this device will suit me down to the ground.
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I have an eeePC, and because of the screen-rotation feature, found it an ideal little book reader. It is lighter than many books of the same size, it can be cradled comfortably in my off-hand (left, in my case), and the arrow keys end up in about the location where I'd naturally reach to turn a page. Beyond casual reading on a beach, that little laptop is great for caching offline web pages for bird and plant identification, and for a variety of other field r
Re:Outside, leave the laptop at home (Score:5, Interesting)
You seem to only see the how people will use the computer instead of doing "outsidey things".
I see it as the opposite. If I work with a computer anyway, and assuming I'm not confined to the company's office, why shouldn't I at least be able to do it outside, enjoying the sun and fresh hair?
If people are "nerds" they'll be using a computer anyway. Preventing them from using it outside won't result in people spending more time doing sports, it'll just result in more people being in the darkness of their houses.
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Damn, just noticed it. Sorry!
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I see it as the opposite. If I work with a computer anyway, and assuming I'm not confined to the company's office, why shouldn't I at least be able to do it outside, enjoying the sun and fresh hair?
Exactly. There's a nicely landscaped grassy area outside my office. If I was doing something paper based I could go out there and work on a fine day. With a suitable screen and WiFi, I could work on my laptop out there.
With my current standard laptop screen, I can't do that. I can't even sit and work in my conservatory at home if the sun's out.
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Re:Outside, leave the laptop at home (Score:4, Funny)
If you're outside, you should, you know, be outside, doing outsidey kinds of things.
You mean like: masturbating, having sex with animals, anal sex, sex, peeping, ... things like that?
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Remind me not to go camping where you live.
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Tell that to the UPS delivery person.
Re:Outside, leave the laptop at home (Score:5, Insightful)
"If you're outside, you should, you know, be outside, doing outsidey kinds of things."
Such as reading vehicle manuals when I work on them outdoors, ordering parts with the help of online catalogs, looking up welding consumables so I can email the part number and pick them up later... :)
With a display I can read in sunlight, I could comfortably speed up much of the work I do. Even inside, squinting to see detail sucks, and being able to stand back from a screen and read it easily is a plus.
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yep. no reading outside. If/when you work at home, no taking your laptop poolside instead of locking yourself up.
Half-full vs Half-empty: do while outdoors things we would normally have to be indoors to do, or start doing indoor-sy things when we have to be outdoors. Oh wait, when do we HAVE TO be outdoors ?
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Now, it isn't like I have to sully the purity of my untanned pastiness by facing sunlight on the clock; but I've heard persistent rumors of people who make vocational use of computers, among other tools, in the merciless company of our nearest star...
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If you're outside, you should, you know, be outside, doing outsidey kinds of things.
Laptops are only an "indoorey" thing because their screens are pretty crap in the sunlight. This fixes the problem, thus why shouldn't computers be an "outsidey" kind of thing?
I use my XO outside all of the time. It's great to sit on a quiet bench in a park, have some lunch, feed the ducks and hack on some Python :)
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> Laptops are only an "indoorey" thing because their screens are pretty crap in the sunlight.
Also: heat, humidity, dust, and bugs.
i will (Score:1)
i will buy one when they come out with a netbook like that standard. not because i want to replace the screen, but because of the cost. after a few months of competition, the sunlight screen netbooks will become reasonably priced.
also, it would be nice if it had one of those fancy middle hinges so you can truly read it like an ebook reader. and, of course, a touch screen version of this would be too awesome for words.
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Why go to all that trouble - it's easier just to put "iPhone" or "iPad" in the summary to the editors and be done with it. Especially if it's on Timothy's watch.
Re:Recipe For Success (Score:5, Funny)
Pixel Qi + Cortex + Android + MeeGo + Open-Source Hardware + XO Laptop + Arduino
Oh god, I thought you were describing an actual device for a minute there. I think I just had a nerdgasm.
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perfect now shove it all into an ipad body and sell it for $399 and i will buy it.
the ipad is a nice form factor I just have to wait 2-3 years for anyone else to make something similar, as for what I want it for I will want features apple won't approve.
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I've been patiently holding my breath for a while now.
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yep. any quarter now.
next quarter it will become 2011, After that it will be late 2011.
The real secret to apple's success is they don't announce anything that isn't actually ready for shipping. Even in software there are very few broken promises. It is the one thing that I wish every other computer company would mimic.
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Last I read Notion Ink *will* come later this year with their tablet. But with a regular TFT. The Pixel Qi display will have to wait for a later model.
I agree though that this type of display is more important for tablets than for regular netbooks or notebooks. Only geeks use notebooks out in the sun and even then only rarely. You're much more likely to do only some light consuming out in the sun and this is what tablets are good at. I can image roasting in the sun and reading a book, but programming or suc
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here we go (Score:5, Insightful)
"no other color screen device I own can be seen as clearly in sunlight. Not even the famed iPad."
is the ipad a particularly good screen in direct sunlight, or was it just an excuse to mention your "famed ipad" ?
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It is also worth pointing out that The New Yorker found the Kindle II's low contrast made it too difficult to read. In the review, the author ends up using it to buy books and then reads them on his iPhone even though he obviously wished there was a larger iPhone like device for reading books (obviously, pre iPad).
You have to wonder, are these screens higher contrast or the same dark gray on light gray?
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is the ipad a particularly good screen in direct sunlight, or was it just an excuse to mention your "famed ipad" ?
I think the iPad is advertised as being usable in daylight.
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Lighten up, Francis. [wikipedia.org]
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I've not used an iPad myself but from the reviews I've read it is in fact particularly bad for outside use.
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Not if you turn up the brightness and of course read it at an angle which diminishes the reflection off of the glass! I find it highly readable and use it often on lunch in the sun or in my backyard. So, not particularly bad for outside use, in fact it's QUITE readable outside in full sunlight.
Red on Red! (Score:2)
or was it just an excuse to mention your "famed ipad" ?
Stand down there soldier! I know you Apple Haters just go wild at any mention of an Apple product, so you probably overlooked the fact that "famed iPad" was heavily sarcastic! He dislikes Apple as much as you, no need to attack him.
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If you think that was an attack, you need to grow thicker skin :)
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It was fairly mild, but it was still sarcastic. It still displays as I said, a dislike for the iPad and is not trying to promote it... do you disagree?
On my mobile phone (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like that screen on my mobile phone. That's where I'd need a sunlight-readable, battery conserving display most. Most GPS functions only work outside due to feeble GPS signals, but at the same time the display become almost unreadable.
There are plenty of business opportunities and markets for Mary Lou to explore !
Markus
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I've had something like that for over 15 years now. [wikipedia.org]. Old-school greyscale LCD, in calculators and digital watches, has always had the advantage of being daylight-readable and low-power.
Re:On my mobile phone (Score:5, Interesting)
There are plenty of business opportunities and markets for Mary Lou to explore !
I can't wait until these are in ATMs (cash machines). Those bastards are so hard to read sometimes that I can have my face right up to them, hands forming a tunnel to the screen and STILL not make out the text!
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I normally ask one of the helpful homeless people who gather around these machines to hold my coat as a sunshade while I enter the PIN number.
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I don't get it... My $30 Motorola i425 phone has a (small) screen which is perfectly readable in direct sunlight.
Drop-in replacement is AWESOME (Score:4, Insightful)
For once, I see the standardized parts working as they are meant to be. Swapping components on a netbook is hard to say the least, but to see someone just grab a part & shove it into a netbook, tells me that this could very well turn out to be one of the "optional" features for people when ordering off their favourite supplier.
When will these be available for 11.6in screens? (Score:2)
Maybe in my next laptop (Score:1)
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OLED often worse than LCD in sunlight (Score:2)
So far the early OLED cell phones are worse than LCDs. The need to try to overpower the sun for visibilty which isn't a great idea.
Transreflective solutions will win in these circumstances.
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My netbvook would be a hell of a lot better if it had non-reflective glass/plastic. If it did you could use it in the shade, but reflections on the screen are brighter than the screen itself. That and the keyboard are the only things I don't like about it.
Uh... thanks, but no. (Score:1)
"Shades of gray and some color tints are visible."
No thanks.
I want video-capable screen update times, full and vibrant color under all types of lighting conditions that I could otherwise comfortably read a normal book in, and not have the requirement that under any of them I might have to feel like I'm reading while staring into a flashlight.
Re:Uh... thanks, but no. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Uh... thanks, but no. (Score:4, Interesting)
I want video-capable screen update times, full and vibrant color under all types of lighting conditions that I could otherwise comfortably read a normal book in, and not have the requirement that under any of them I might have to feel like I'm reading while staring into a flashlight.
And I want a pony. Well, no, actually, I want a Maserati, but the outcome is still the same. I don't get what I want, so I have to live with the best that I can afford.
Pixel Qi screens are not perfect, but they are still a major step ahead compared to contemporary display tech, in that they blend some of the best qualities of normal and eInk screens with practically no downsides. That is already a big deal - if I can have a general-purpose tablet that can also work as non-eye-straining ebook reader with great battery life, well, that's awesome!
More will come in due time.
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Actually, I said "Thanks, but no". I said that the lack of good color viewable in direct sunlight does not meet my own expectations for a display. At most, I say it's unworthy of *MY* consideration, as my initial post really only focused on what *MY* expectations are, yet for some reason all but one of the responses I've seen here so far (and it also appears I've been modded down as well) seem to suggest that the purpose of my post was actually to belittle the endeavor. I didn't just stop and say somet
PS (Score:2)
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Basically, it sounds like you are asking for a reflective color display with no backlight. They exist, but they aren't particularly popular, so it'll be very expensive. Most people are used to having to adjust a lamp to be abl
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E-Readers? (Score:1)
Re:E-Readers? (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't make sense to make a dedicated e-reader with such a screen, as it would be capable of much more. For example, you could actually have usable web browsing and video playback on it. At which point you call such a gadget a "tablet" - and, yes, there has been a bunch of those announced with PQ screens. I, for one, am waiting for Adam [notionink.in].
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Oh Crap (Score:5, Funny)
XO-1.5 (Score:3, Interesting)
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The 1.5 hardware rev initially debuted last September [olpcnews.com]. The design was filed with the FCC this past February [olpcnews.com], and they started distributing models through their contributors program a few weeks later [olpcnews.com]. Unfortunately, you still can't get a full machine, or even a motherboard, through the G1G1 program [olpcnews.com]... yet, anyway.
transflective displays are available (Score:4, Informative)
which are indoor / outdoor viewable.
The problem is finding units which have them --- picked up a Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121 w/ one and it's perfectly readable in direct sunlight --- I use it as a map display unit on long trips.
Not many new units being made w/ such displays though.
Of course (Score:2, Interesting)
I have an XO-1 and its screen is fantastic in the sun. Of course Pixel Qi screens will excel there.
What I'm curious about is whether they fixed the reflection angle (reflective mode indoors only works if you bounce light off a wall, otherwise you just get a point of reflected light somewhere on the screen.) Also, when you go backlit, there's color, but everything looks fuzzy, and you get a diagonal line effect across the screen. I'm wondering if they've fixed those yet...
I'm cheering for their efforts thoug
Sunlight friendly display in gameboy color (Score:2)
no other color screen device I own can be seen as clearly in sunlight
The ancient GameBoy Color has such a display. Although horrible indoors, it shines outdoors due to a highly reflective display that lacks back-lighting. And the kids love 'em like the Zune! Plus, none of those messy downloadable games. Just pure cartridgy goodness.
has everyone forgotten reflective TFT already? (Score:1)
Average nerd sunlight time: 0.75 minutes per week (Score:1, Flamebait)
So now nerds have a display specifically for those occasional moments in the sun. Nobody else knows or cares about these devices.
iPad works great in sunlight. Sorry that Apple's super bright IPS screens are fucking up people's OLED, eInk, and Qi reviews, but lying about iPad to give these other devices some marginal utility is truly lame. Try to have an iPad in front of you before mentioning it in your review you starfucker. A good tip is to review tablets and readers without saying "iPad" and see if there