I'll be getting the Pixel Qi version, if the reviews hold up. I'm slightly skeptical that the device will meet expectations, but I've already put money back to buy the device as soon as it's available. The Pixel Qi screen alone places it above an iPad.
Likewise; I think that this will get a huge amount of preorders from people that have just been waiting for any Pixel Qi tablet at all. I can't imagine how they could screw this device up badly enough to warrant me not paying $500 for it. (And they may not screw it up at all; it sounds pretty open, with good specs.)
I'm really happy to see that this is evidently not vaporware.
So I hadn't hear about the Pixel Qi screen. Wikipedia just says
>The company [Pixel Qi] designs liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that can be manufactured using the same fabrication machinery as conventional LCDs. However the Pixel Qi displays are also able to turn off the backlight to save energy, and switch to a low-power black and white reflective mode which can function in ambient light.
Is it correct to describe these as LCD's with a Kindle-style e-ink screen sandwiched on top? Am I wrong in assuming that it has two distinct modes: back-lit color (which is hard to read in bright light) and e-ink B&W (which only works in good light)?
Actually, it can just turn the backlight off. The B&W mode isn't e-ink at all, it's still basically an LCD screen that can be illuminated by external light. So the effect should be the same, but this is the reason I want to wait for reviews to come out before I purchase it. It seems like a perfect compromise to me between e-ink and LCD screens. Sometimes, I want a backlight. If I'm reading, though, I probably don't want it activated.
As I understand it, it is a standard(?) trans-reflective (like half silvered mirror - it reflects front lighting, but also can be back-lit) black & white LCD.
In color (backlight) mode, the backlight shines strips of color, so the pixels gate the colored light rather than having a white backlight and color filters on the pixels.
In B/W mode, the backlight is turned off (saving quite a bit of power) and the LCD uses the reflective qualities of the LCD to reflect the front light for the lighting source.
The interesting thing is that front lighting will overwhelm and wash out the color from the backlighting as the front lighting gets stronger.
I have an OLPC, which is the predecessor display, and it works quite well. My opinion of the display is that the compromise was visible but not bad: the color definitely isn't as vibrant as a traditional color LCD or OLED, but the daylight view-ability was very good vs. a traditional backlit LCD that becomes poor or unreadable in bright sunlight.
There are some pictures on the Groklaw article, although I was focusing on size rather than the display when I took the pictures. In retrospect, I should have focused on the display more than the size. :-/
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080128171935946
Perhaps there is a partially-reflective film on the back of the LCD, but in front of the backlight diffusor, that lets the backlight through (with some attentuation).
> Is it correct to describe these as LCD's with a Kindle-style e-ink screen sandwiched on top?
Not quite. E-ink is a different technology[0]; this really is a form of LCD [1], albeit one that has somewhat different reflective properties. That said, I've got an OLPC laptop and was stunned at how legible they were in full sunlight---very impressively different from your typical laptop screen. (E-ink is still better; it has much more of a "writing on paper" feel. But it's slower.)
I have one of the OLPC XO-1 units in my hands. When the backlight is on, it's still readable under very bright light such as sunlight and will look like the kindle's black & white.
When you turn the backlight to zero, it switches to ultra-lowpower hi-res black & white sunlight readable mode.
It's pretty neat and something I hope to see in all future devices.
