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Originally Posted by toronado
Anyone know anything about "front-lighting"? This CR article mentions it:
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/ele...colorwise.html
Sounds like a great way to have your cake and eat it too. A reflective display that isn't backlit, but with a built-in light source that lets you use it in dark environments without using an external light source sounds like the ultimate eReader. |
Sony tried it and wiff'd the design. Maybe they just had the wrong display type to make it work..hard to say. But one thing is due to the laws of physics revolving light falloff being an inverse square relationship, it makes it hard to evenly light the display. Then add to it the difficulty in illuminating the display w/o blasting the light into the user's eyes and you have a tricky problem.
Honestly the best option is a much improved transflective LED/LCD panel that is vastly more efficient in reflecting the light back in transflective mode than the older displays used in PDA's that could be used in sunshine by simply turning off the backlight. My old PDA used this sort of panel and it worked very well though I never did read for long periods outside simply because it was not quite bright enough. I think this was the goal of Mary-Lou Jepson and her Pixel Qi displays. This first generation is not quite there as the examples we have seen are not strong as really good displays when the back light is on and they are also not as good in direct sun as any of the EPD displays (think eink brand display panels.) Still over all the Pixel Qi is a nice option for a more flexible device that can be used under more conditions compared to the very limited EPD type technology.