I don't care so much about the privacy - I care about the fact that there are severe usability issues.
Transparent displays make sense where you need to present information in a view of the real world, ie a HUD.
They make absolutely jack shit sense everywhere else. You've got less contrast, and even worse, the contrast is variable across the screen. It could even be moving. It could be exceptionally bad - this screen would be unreadable if, say, a beam of sunlight were striking the floor that is in the background of the display.
The only reason we think transparent displays are "cool" is because scifi authors, TV show writers, and hollywood are fucking obsessed with them. In The Expanse everyone has a transparent phone and my first thought was "how the fuck are you supposed to see anything on that screen!?"
I doubt any company has done usability studies on the damn things. They'll get as far as prototypes like these, people will try to use them, quickly figure out they're complete shit, and all the transparent-specific R&D will have been wasted unless it can be pivoted into HUD tech, but HUDs can't be made like this because the focal length is wrong.
A HUD only makes sense if it's projected at a similar focal distance to the other stuff you're looking at, which this also doesn't do. So it's not really useful for that purpose either.
I think if the (transparent) phone can somehow blur the background and add more darkness then you could make it a pretty usable product... not anytime soon, I wouldn't think...
> I doubt any company has done usability studies on the damn things. They'll get as far as prototypes like these, people will try to use them, quickly figure out they're complete shit, and all the transparent-specific R&D will have been wasted unless it can be pivoted into HUD tech, but HUDs can't be made like this because the focal length is wrong.
Products like these are definitely not supposed to sell well and Lenovo doesn't expect it to. What it does is deliver a "wow" factor. This is effectively advertising.
I'd like to see it, when you sit opposite someone with a laptop it does feel like a bit of barrier, perhaps this would lessen that? Hard to imagine without actually trying it, which I don't imagine would be happening to me anytime soon!
Transparent displays make sense where you need to present information in a view of the real world, ie a HUD.
They make absolutely jack shit sense everywhere else. You've got less contrast, and even worse, the contrast is variable across the screen. It could even be moving. It could be exceptionally bad - this screen would be unreadable if, say, a beam of sunlight were striking the floor that is in the background of the display.
The only reason we think transparent displays are "cool" is because scifi authors, TV show writers, and hollywood are fucking obsessed with them. In The Expanse everyone has a transparent phone and my first thought was "how the fuck are you supposed to see anything on that screen!?"
I doubt any company has done usability studies on the damn things. They'll get as far as prototypes like these, people will try to use them, quickly figure out they're complete shit, and all the transparent-specific R&D will have been wasted unless it can be pivoted into HUD tech, but HUDs can't be made like this because the focal length is wrong.