Pixel Qi Working On a Low Power E-ink/LCD Hybrid Color Display

We talked about Pixel Qi a couple of times in the past to mention their work on low-power displays or cheap computers. This time again Pixel Qi wants to shake things up by creating a display that is low-power (like e-ink) but that can reproduce colors and use current manufacturing technology, dominated by LCD.

This doesn’t sound like a bad plan: e-Ink is clearly not good enough and customers want color and possibly refresh rates that can sustain animation. However, it would work only if the power consumption is orders of magnitude better than current LCD screens.

In the next two years, we’re going to see a color eBook and Pixel Qi is bent on winning the race. If they succeed, the holy-grail “flexible” display will likely appear even farther down the road. A 150dpi low-power color display might mark the beginning of “good enough” for eBooks.