We knew Pixel Qi was
up to something when it pledged to give us a cheap laptop that could last 40 hours on a charge. Now we can finally see what, with the OLPC
spin-off releasing some images of a prototype screen called 3qi that looks like it can combine the best of e-ink and traditional LCD displays -- prototypes that will be shown in the flesh at
Computex next week. The screen can work as a traditional backlit LCD when indoors, can have that backlight disabled to be perfectly visible outdoors (shown after the break), and, as its pièce de résistance, can be toggled into an energy-efficient "epaper" mode. How exactly the company is fitting these seemingly disparate slices of technology into a single 10.1-inch screen is something of a mystery, but we're guessing much will be answered next week ahead of a planned product launch by the end of the year. Color us intrigued.
[Via
PC World]
posted May 29th 2009 8:57AM
Awesome, simply awesome. Battery life is my main drawback with bringing my laptop to school as opposed to printing off all of my material (which equals at least the weight of my laptop). I print in mostly black and white anyway because I'm cheap, so no difference for me. Slap this baby on a netbook and you can go for days on a charge.
Dammit, I'm at school RIGHT NOW, and on 100% charge, my macbook lasts... lets see... 45 minutes.
And I've owned this thing for only 2 years...
I've had my laptop since 2005 (Inspiron 6000) and I still get 1.5-2 hours on a charge if I'm only using Powerpoint, Word, and Excel. I also turn the screen brightness way down and turn off the wireless if I'm not using it.
Never spend too much for a laptop. 800-900$ should be plenty enough for find the sweet performance/price spot. You can find new battery for most laptop on the web quite easily for like 40$.
$8-900 laptops usually has the worst battery performance of them all, excluding atom netbooks. Double that, and you actually got something that got a decent battery lifespan
"Haikibutsu @ May 29th 2009 9:08AM
Dammit, I'm at school RIGHT NOW, and on 100% charge, my macbook lasts... lets see... 45 minutes.
And I've owned this thing for only 2 years..."
Makes you wanna reconsider all those new Apple MacBooks with built in batteries that have to be sent in to be replaced... with a fee... in order to keep your warranty, eh? On top of that, no guarantee that you'll even get the same unit back.
It's silly to assume that a more expensive laptop ($1500+) is automatically going to have better battery performance than a low-mid priced model.
@Jimbo:
No, if it's just a battery replacement, you WILL get the same laptop back. And it's two models...it's not like they did that to their entire line...although it does count for more when your entire line is only 5 laptops.
Neat.
Veeeerrrrry Interesting!
My understanding is that it works because they apply the colour filter array under the transflective LCD but on top of the backlight. This means that in low light the backlight provides the light for a full colour display. In bright conditions light is reflected off the device before reaching the colour filter. This means that you get a bright, but almost greyscale, reflective display and a "traditional" emissive display in one device... very cool!
This seems really similar to my Sega Game Gear back in the early 90's. I could switch it from using a back light or natural light with a flip of a switch. I'm sure this is much more advanced...
@Will - You should win an engadget prize or +1 Internets for that explanation. That actually makes sense. Thanks for explaining it.
Will, your statement is completely wrong. It does use epaper technology, not transflective LCD. We will definitely see more of this soon. From their FAQ (http://www.pixelqi.com/faq):
"We will be showing the screen at SID Display Week in San Antonio May 31-June 3 2009 by private appoinment, and at Computex June 1-6 also by private appointment."
It looks like it's an e-ink display for black and white, and lcd for colors. The e-ink is higher resolution than the color display, which is fine since human eyes are better at seeing contrast than color.
This is the same company that makes the screens for the OLPC, so I am sure the technology is similar.
The screen on the OLPC is well documented. You can read about it here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display
Derek, you're a moron and either don't understand it yourself or didn't read wills post.
@Derek
Did you read the links you provided? I'm pretty sure that is exactly what Will was describing. "E-Paper Mode" does not necessarily mean that it is not transreflective LCD display tech.
This is great, but will it be as easy on the eye as the Electrophotetic displays (like E Ink as found on the Kindle)?
I hope so. I couldn't justify a Kindle but I could justify reading large documents on a laptop that can switch into e-ink mode. Reading on the LCD drives me crazy.
@ash
agreed, most of my textbooks for school are available online as an e-book, but I cannot stand reading lengthy texts on my laptop, so I have always opted for the actual book. I have been waiting for a laptop with an e-ink mode for this very reason.
so hard to buy technology these days, by the time you've decided what to get something new and completely better is anounced to be released in a relatively short amount of time
its a waiting game that never ends haha
Interesting tech, but hopefully it has a much faster refresh rate than the Kindle 2. I love my Kindle, but typing and doing work with a screen like that would get tiring.
@Richard
But that's what's so great about this when you need to type you just switch into lcd mode. My understanding is this display has three modes: color backlit lcd, greyscale non-backlit lcd (like my olpc) AND e-ink (like your kindle). I think the second mode would work great for you, long battery life with fast refresh.
It'll be interesting when there's coloured e-ink. I'll not be interesting in just black and white.
This would be awesome for light weight laptops. I always want to go outside with my laptop, but glossy screens just do not work in anyway.
(I have to have a battery sticking out of the bottom of my 13.3" to get 5 hours, I like my nice screen, but wouldn't mind it as the tech gets more refined)
One can probably switch between modes (with or without backlight), thus allowing to have a PC to eInk-like type of experience... Now how does this compare in terms of dpi to "pure" eInk devices?
I am looking forward to meeting 3qi in person :)
should be really good resultion since in greyscale mode the colour subpixels are all used to increase the resolution - I guess 3 times (in one dimension) if they use a standard RGB sub-pixel arrangement...
40 hour battery life and 205DPI in e-reader mode.
Hopefully mac can latch onto this tech. My main drawback of my unibody pro is the glossy screen..... Because my company had to get the very newest tech..... This screen would make my mac an even more sexy piece of hardware......
yes mac is very good company
zey import very tasty appls
this completes the things that i want to have in my dreamnotebook...
40/45nm amd gpu/processor (with enough juice fur starcraft2+diablo3)
pixel qi display
gallium3d based driver
direct3d statetracker
6h+ batterylife
14inch screen
i'd give an arm for a computer with these specs...
more likely a leg, using a computer with only one arm is shit.
Make those spec a convertible tablet (even a smaller screen would be okay for portability), and I'm sold.
eink based ebook readers, RIP
Except that eInk still has the advantage in battery life. Also this screen is only daylight readable in monochrome. Color eInk isn't that far off now.
*BTW, yes, two-three years is close enough for me to call it not far off. I mean considering how long it's been already.
This doesn't appear to be any different than a regular transflective ECB display.
It works with a backlight. It works with reflected (ambient) light. And if you turn off all the voltage dividers inside, you end up with 8 color mode (where each of r,g and b can only be 100% on or 100% off, giving 2^3 colors). The display will only remain there as long as power is supplied, unlike ePaper.
The only problem is 8 color mode is going to take a non-trivial amount of power on a display that big. On a laptop battery, it could go a very long time, but runtime on a small battery like an eReader uses would be limited. Finally, like any other transflective display, the contrast ratio will be reduced.
Also, it isn't in any way new technology. However, it will have a FAR better response time than real ePaper.
Unanswered questions (in order of importance to me):
1. What does it cost?
2. What's the pixel response time (in color mode)?
3. What's the resolution of the color mode (which is what i'll be using)?
4. Is the technology currently suitable/scalable for larger formats such as HDTV screen sizes 55 inch etc (if not, why)?
5. What's the color gamut?
Engadget .. if you're gonna be at the unveiling event in Austin .. can you guys find out the answers?
For #3, the example above looks like it's may be 1024 x 768
Alan
How do you reckon that?
Sorry, I meant 1024x600
Pure win.
Especially if you're too lazy to carry around books to study and study from your laptop.
This is an effing awesome idea!
Throw in multi-touch and i'm sold.
marion! my same thoughts.... tho it dosent have to be multitouch in my case. i can be happy with single touch or even stylus! :)
shouldnt be to hard.
to bad we still dont know if the epaper mode affects max resolution or refresh rate when on backlight mode. if it does id be glad to spend up to 200-300 dlrs more in a hp tx2z with touchscreen with this included.
I congratulate them on their cleverness, but I also hate them for yet again extending the life of the stopgap technology that is LCD by enabling manufacturers to make shoddy fake e-paper that will reduce the move forward in the real e-paper's development.
And incidentally this 'e-paper' will be 'blessed' with angle dependency..
Not just 'laziness' that makes you want to not carry books around.
The problem with printed books is that they start going obsolete the day they are printed.
DRM-free eBooks are useful because they can stay with you forever.
Backlight is the worst thing for the eyes, so even this ecb will be ok , but I am not sure it could be called "e-ink" . E ink seems tobe a trademark of eink corp