Comment by lhl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lhl | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago I used to pine for an E-Ink (or later, a Mirasol) display so that I could have sunlight-visible portable computing, but sadly the iPad basically wiped that market away.

While the standalone monitor is neat, I think the biggest use-case would still be for a portable/outdoor terminal. That being said, with MEMS-IGZO devices finally coming from Sharp/Qualcomm (Pixtronix) this year (they've been showing it off since 2013 [1], but have announced a 1H 2015 release in JP [2]) that boasts some impressive specs [3]: 220ppi, 120% NTSC color gamut, 8000:1 contrast ratio, 50% power consumption of an LCD. It is also sunlight readable and has switchable low power/low refresh grayscale and color modes.

It's not bistable, but is looking like a really good e-reader/tablet option. Personally, I'm still looking forward to the revamped SMI Mirasol [4] but that's probably years out... (basically, the perennial story of cool display tech)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGVKRTosykg

[2] http://www.sharp.co.jp/corporate/news/141006-a.html

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBkIRil7f_A

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMDaJB2y4vc

I have a Kyobo tablet with a Mirasol display, and while it is vastly underpowered and less than 6 inch display it's still pretty good for watching video on YouTube etc. in full sunlight. The only real drawback of the display is that whites can look silvery depending on how it, you, and the sun are angled.

I'd really love to see a thin e-ink screen that you could place in front of a regular laptop screen. That way you wouldn't even have to switch devices you could just grab your regular laptop and go work outside in the sun for a few hours.

So kind of the way ink on paper adds black to make CMYK, the screen would add black to make RGBK? That would be awesome! I wonder how hard it would be to line up two independent displays? They'd need to be pixel perfect.

While that Sharp tablet looks very interesting, I'd be wary of the fact that they also produce the AQUOS series. I'm currently using a Crystal and it is far and away the single worst touchscreen experience I've had (yes, the G1 did indeed boast more reliable touch performance).

I had it replaced once thanks to the fact that the hardware was known to be defective (well, known to Sharp and Softbank, at least; they didn't bother telling people) but both new and old suffer positively abysmal touch recognition and performance.

Sample size of one, of course, but buyer beware. I'd wait for feedback from the trenches before even considering a Sharp product in this category.

Hmm, I played around with one of those at Yodabashi the other day and it seemed fine. Did a quick search for some reviews [1] and none of them mention anything about the touchscreen being bad - seems like a standard 5-finger capacitive multitouch. I wonder if you just've just had bad luck. I searched for "bad" and "terrible" touchscreen and didn't find any results. If it was something widespread, it'd be all over the Android forums.

[1] https://www.google.com/#q=sharp+aquos+crystal+review

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