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Originally Posted by kjk
I think what he meant was eInk reader.
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Originally Posted by stustaff
hmm maybe it would do 400 hours if you put a page on in 'eink' mode and then just left it on a shelf. that would make sense.
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Just to clarify, Pixel Qi screen tech is an LCD, but tweaked a little so that instead of using a backlight to fight ambient lighting, it has reflective layers that utilize ambient light to make the screen readable. In epaper mode (not really related to eink in terms of mechanics), the backlight goes off entirely. It's an awesome technology.
e-ink screens are very expensive compared to LCD. They also force devices to serve a single purpose, because the painfully slow refresh times of eink makes it poorly suited to many types of applications, including video and many types of games.
The number of hours listed in the article doesn't make a lot of sense. I recommend ignoring that part. Engadget has some good writers, but not all of them know what they're talking about. He appears to have gotten confused there.
The brilliance of a PixelQi device running on a decent OS (mobile or otherwise), is that you wouldn't be tied to just reading books from one store. Right now, AFAIK the only big commercial reader that supports Android is eReader (ereader.com/fictionwise, currently owned by B&N). I'd expect however that Amazon and B&N would both be eying Android as their next platform for expanding kindleware/nookware.
This is the most exciting ereader I've seen yet. There's no way I'd tie myself down to one major store with their proprietary hardware/software. And while it's nice that the nook runs Android and can be hacked to run unofficial applications, starting out with an open platform that doesn't need to be hacked is a dramatically better solution. To wit, one that is a full blown tablet with access to all manner of application types, rather than doing solo duty as an ereader.