LONDON – Pixel Qi Corp. (San Bruno, Calif.), a developer of reflective liquid crystal displays that can be read in sunlight thereby saving power, has announced that it can produce a screen with higher image quality than the iPad 3 retina screen. The company said it is in discussions to finalize partners and customers for the technology and the screen sizes they need.
The two drawbacks currently faced by the Pixel Qi LCD technology are that when it is backlit and in full color the contrast and saturation are not as good as conventional LCD technology and when it goes into reflective mode it drops back to monochrome display.
However, CEO Mary Lou Jepsen said on the company's website that: "We have a new architecture that matches the resolution of the iPad 3 screen and its full image quality, including matching or exceeding contrast, color saturation, the viewing angle and so forth with massive power savings."
At the same 2048 by 1536 resolution Pixel Qi claims that its display will consume about 1 watt compared with the iPad 3 display's 8 watts (see table below).
Click on image to enlarge.Comparison of iPad 2 and iPad 3 with shipping and proposed Pixel Qi displays. Source: Pixel QiJepsen added that there is an additional very low power mode that consumes just 1 percent of the power consumed by the iPad 3 screen.
However, no indication was given of when the improved Pixel Qi screens would be forthcoming or any photographs provided of the next generation Pixel Qi displays.
Before founding Pixel Qi in 2008 Jepsen was CTO of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization.
Pixel Qi, founded in 2008, is included in
version 13.0 of the Silicon 60 list of emerging startups published by EE Times. Pixel Qi entered the Silicon 60,
EE Times' list of emerging startup companies at version 11.0 in October 2010.
Related links and articles:
www.pixelqi.com
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