Pixel Qi display to outclass new iPad's in quality and efficiency

Jos

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We've been hearing about Pixel Qi's exciting display technology for a while now, but the company has yet to make significant progress in the consumer market -- only about a dozen not-so-popular products feature them. That's not stopping them from making bold claims, though. The company is teasing their next-gen screens claiming they will match or exceed the image quality of the new iPad while offering big power savings.

Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen says the upcoming transflective LCD technology will not only match the new iPad's display in terms of resolution, at 2048 by 1536 pixels, but apparently it will also match and exceed its contrast, color saturation and even viewing angles.

Jepsen criticized the fact that about 90% of the iPad's battery seems to be dedicated to driving the display, which consumes around 8 watts at peak. In contrast, their display technology will feature a very low power mode that runs at a full 100X power reduction from the peak power consumed by the new iPad screen.

pixel deliver -power retina display rival pixel qi display retina display

The blog post details four different scenarios (low power mode, dark room, bright office and outside) and in all of them the Pixel Qi display would purportedly use a fraction of the power of the new iPad’s display.

Unfortunately there was no mention of price or availability, as the company is still in the process of finalizing development partners for the new display and defining the sizes they will make them in. The improvements certainly sound promising. We'll see if they can finally convince manufacturers to use them in their products.

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Sounds enticing! Anyone know why they are having trouble finding companies to put the display to use?

I think much of it had to do with the "one size fits all" production mentality of Pixel Qi. They had set sizes and resolutions preset, to lock in factory contracts for mass production. This whole endeavor is actually somewhat of an offshoot of the OLPC initiative (which Mary Lou Jepsen was a part of), and was meant to address the issue of finding a good and very cheap screen for those products. So, low cost mass production was a big push for Pixel Qi - but having to mold your product around a screen, rather than having a screen produced to fit your product package, is not necessarily how the big tech companies like to operate.

Plus, I believe the early Pixel Qi screens got some bad press with complaints of limited viewing angles and grainy appearance in the "e-ink" mode, but I am not sure how much of that was due to some of the choices of product and coating (like the Adam's matte covering, which eliminated reflective glare but did seem to degrade the screen's clarity).
 
ya, if so good, why aren't ALL the makers INCLUDING apple jumping at the chance to license this new tech.... its like those people that say "use this chip to get 7% more mileage and 15% horsepower" LOL... if was so good, the factories would JUMPING at it.
 
If what Vrmitrax is saying is true, then that would be a problem for manufacturers. Remember Apple sued Samsung over the shape of thier tablet because it was the same height/width ratio as the iPad (and a sheet of paper, but whatever). Good licesening should fix this though.

And really... you can't tell Samsung or Apple that they have to design their entire tablet around a screen they don't have control over.
 
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