Transflective screens are a vastly underappreciated technology these days. Back in the 00's basically every PDA came with one as standard. I don't know why we just decided we didn't need them in the smartphone era.
This video is an example of why. It looks crap and has no color. I have no problems seeing my phone in the sun and it looks stunning. The HN crowd hypes up tech that real users don't want and exaggerates problems that real users don't have or don't care about.
I just tried to use my iPhone on direct sunlight. It does not look stunning. It is barely usable.
I agree, I'd rather not have to turn the brightness up to 100% so that my battery life drains faster to be able to view my phone in direct sunlight.
My OnePlus phone in direct sunlight not only pushes the physical OLED brightness to the max, but seems to also apply some filter to the image that makes dark colors brighter, e.g. a dark gray keyboard almost turns into lighter gray. Does help with visibility.
Turn 180° and the problem is solved.
It's in color. It just appears more black and white when in direct sunlight.
I'm personally fine without color on a device I can use outdoors. Text don't need to be colored to be readable. I tried to work on a laptop outdoors - even in shadow in sunny weather I had to set brightness close to maximum which drains battery too fast.
They're not the best for multimedia, that's why. But for strictly informational displays they're really nice. I like the one on the Pebble Time watch.