Quote:
Originally Posted by James_Wilde
What on earth is a front-lit anything? Where is the light source? One of those things you can buy to hang from the top cover of a book you're reading in bed?
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Modern front lighting uses a thin layer of (usually) plastic laminated on top of the display pannel to carry light from a set of LEDs inside the bezel. It is a variation of the light pipe principles behind fiber optic cable; where optical fiber cables are designed to minimize leakage and keep the light inside the cable, front lighting film controls it so the light preferentialy "leaks" out towards the display panel and spreads it out to illuminate it. (It's like flowing water over glass.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pipe
B&N's Nook was the first to market with light guide front lighting.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/nook...ble/1108046469
Sony tried front lighting *without* the lightguide in the PRS-700 4 years ago with less than successful results. (Though some of the minuses were from the touchscreen layer.)
http://gizmodo.com/5058380/hands-on-...hscreen-reader
There is evidence (in a Government contract Amazon is negotiating) that Amazon has front-lit Kindle on the way. (They own a small tech company that has been working on light guide films for years.)
Think of it as a Kindle with a built-in might light; a Nite-lite Kindle.