Quote:
Originally Posted by haydnfan
(a) it takes a constantly applied voltage difference to keep the crystals that way, and thus energy,
(b) it takes a backlight to illuminate the display.
If there is no light source and no voltage needed to twist the crystals, how can that be lcd? We need a more indepth article that explains what the technology actually is and how it works. That posted article doesn't do that.
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The display *does* use energy to sustain the image but because they are using an SRAM cell instead of a DRAM cell to drive each pixel the power to drive the screen is much lower. It turns out that the big power hogs in LCD panels are the backlight and the DRAM refresh. The LCDs themselves are very efficient.
In these days of near universal TFT-driven LCDs, it is easy to forget there are other ways to drive LCDs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_..._active-matrix
Ditto for backlights--they are not indispensable. Reflective-LCD panels are still in use all over and there are still a few industrial computers and instruments that use transflective LCDs.
I doubt anybody is making reflective passive LCD panels in an ebook-grade resolution but if they did the energy draw would be comparable to eink.
Where eink has the edge is that their volume allows them to sell the panels cheap enough to undercut anything but the mainstream color LCDs which are relative power hogs. Which is why I'm not sure this new design can really compete with eink at the product level.
Not out of the gate.
And not without a commitment from a high volume vendor like Apple or Amazon. And those won't commit without ann assurance of millions of panels.
a bt of a chicken and egg problem; the tech is fine but the economics is where the dangers lie...