But e-ink screens can certainly be comfortably read in bright sunlight, where even the best OLED screens are practically unusable.
I guess they went away because their color fidelity wasn't so great in the dark, but they look absolutely amazing in sunlight.
There are two iterations of Sun Vision Display's 32 inch monitor, and Eyemoo recently released an Android tablet with an RLCD sceen.
I have the Eyemoo Epaper S1, and an very happy with it, despite a manufacturing flaw that caused a few sparkly dust specs to be between the screen layers. I use it with the built-in frontlight at 10-20% strength which is a good compromise between brightness and comfort.
The comparable Epix has an AMOLED display and has to turn it off to achieve the same duration (always on turns it into ~1w)
I think what happened was super-bright white LEDs replacing early LEDs and CCFL(Cold-Cathode Fluorescent Light) backlights. iPhone up to 3GS used transflectives, but LCD on 4 and later were transmissive. That was probably the point when cheap sunlight readable backlight became viable.
But that's specifically the claim, and it's hogwash. "Straining your eyes" doesn't damage them. Using your eyes in the dark doesn't damage them. Not using them enough in the light may damage them, according to the article you linked.
It's not hogwash. The issue is focusing to read in dim light causes the cilary muscle to contract to change the shape of the lens. For children, who are still developing, this can cause the shape of the eye to change while growing and lead to myopia- so the claim is not hogwash or unscientific myth as you previously stated.