Just wanted to comment on this:
Quote:
On a normal transflective LCD, there is a colour filter that sits on top of the display with (usually) red, green and blue filters for each subpixel. Underneath the panel is the equivalent of a 2-way mirror. There are two problems with this:
1) The colour filter massively reduces the brightness of the light, both as it goes in and again as it comes out
2) The mirror layer cuts down on the amount of light that can get through from the backlight
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This is true of a
color LCD display, but not of grayscale displays. While they are no longer fashionable, grayscale LCD displays are quite readable in sunlight with no backlighting. They are not quite as power-efficient as e-ink screens, of course, because the electrophoretic screens, being bi-stable, use no energy between page refreshes, but on the other hand, reading refreshes the screen quite frequently. And LCD screens refresh a
lot more quickly than electrophoretic screens. (I personally find the lag pretty annoying when I'm reading journal articles, particularly if I'm trying to quickly skim to find a reference.)
The older grayscale screens didn't have the high DPI count of new LCD screens. I think if someone wanted to bring out a new, high-density grayscale LCD screen with LED backlighting that could be switched off, it could seriously undermine the e-ink market, purely on price. The e-ink displays are trendy, but with the current state of engineering, I think it might be possible to create an LCD grayscale device that would do everything the Kindle does for $100 less, maybe even cheaper.