Self charging phones aren't that far away

How? It is entirely possible to be technically easier to self-charge than change the fundamental efficiency of LCD.

That would be neat. But it's essentially impossible with a traditional LCD screen - the physics don't work that way.

The way a backlit LCD works is that the backlight produces light, which goes straight into a polarizer. That polarizer absorbs 50% of the light energy - if it absorbed any less, then the light wouldn't be polarized. Then the light passes through the liquid crystal element to another polarizer, which either passes the light through or blocks it completely.

If you assume that half the screen is lit at any given time, it's physically impossible to not absorb 75% of the light in the polarizer. There are really only two ways to improve this, one is to produce polarized light directly, and the other is to return the lost energy to the device some other way (as this does).

Yes, but doubtful for an LCD. An LCD should lose at least 66% of its energy in the best case by virtue of how it works. It essentially works by sending out white light and blocking selective spectra of light for each pixel. So even if a pixel is lit up, it should still be blocking or filtering most of the light that hits it and only letting through its particular color.

The better solution is to use LEDs or OLEDs. These do not require a backlight or any blocking but just generate the necessary color of light (and only the necessary color of light) from scratch.

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"What's really cool is these cells can recycle indoor or outdoor light as well..."

It's self-charging at a rate perhaps slower than the rate at which is discharges, for now, but it is effectively charging itself. The question is does it break even?

Self charging as in not needing an external power supply? I guess history changed in 1986 then.

http://www.seiko.co.uk/technology/kinetic