Ultra-mobile computing includes daylight usage and despite attempts at high-brightness screens in the mobile computing market, there has never been a truly low-cost mainstream solution on a device larger than about 4”. Transflective screens have been around for years and I vividly remember the Nokia E90 and how it worked so well in the sun so it’s good to finally be seeing transflective screens on a netbook. OK, so the OLPC had a transflective screen too but that wasn’t exactly mainstream!

Thanks to Clover we now have the Sunbook to consider. It’s a 10” netbook running the Pinetrail platform (single core N450) with a high capacity battery. The key feature is the Pixel Qi transflective screen.

You’ve got two advantages to consider. Sunlight readability and battery life.

“Turning off the display backlight cuts the power consumption in half, providing battery life up to 12 hrs. or more.”

In theory, there’s quite a gain to be had from turning off a backlight. At full backlight power on a netbook, a screen can take 2-3 watts of energy. On a netbook that can idle at 4W (screen off) it’s close to a doubling of energy consumption. In practice though you’re using the device when the screen is on and the netbook is draining an average 8W. The screen, in this scenario, is about 25% of the drain. In addition to that, one rarely operates the screen at 100% and rarely stays in the sun for 8 hours! I am sticking to my original estimate that a transflective screen will add about 10% battery life for the average netbook user although I’d be happy to do some detailed testing – Clover! I don’t want to belittle the advantages here because there are definitely users that would get a bigger battery life advantage and given bright ambient lighting, there are indoor advantages too but I don’t want people running out an paying a $300 premium expecting a doubling of battery life. This is a specialist device for a niche customer.

Sunlight readability is the second advantage of the screen and is the real reason you would be looking at buying the Sunbook. Just being able to use a netbook in the sun for 30 minutes is worth a lot to many people. I can think of many vertical markets where this is important. My Solar-UMPC tour would have been much easier for example!

Testing needs to done on the netbook itself to see if it comes up to scratch but if it does, we’ve got a unique and price-breaking product here.

A PDF brochure is available here which mentions some splash resistance. The Clover Sunbook website is here and the current price is $795. We’re trying to get hold of a sample for testing.

Via Liliputing

I’ve long been a fan of the Pixel Qi screen technology, its ability to work in direct sunlight is something us tech folk have been waiting on for a long time. At Computex 2010 Pixel Qi showed us the technology compared with a Apple iPad and the results are stunning. JKK also got some time with the people at Pixel Qi to show us more how the technology works and the difference it makes to outdoor visibility.

Well we no-longer have to dream of working outdoors in the sun as MakerShed are selling the Pixel Qi 3Qi 10.1” upgrade kit. For a cool $275.00 and a little time you can upgrade your own netbook;

MAKE and Pixel Qi announce the availability of a revolutionary LCD display technology from Pixel Qi–the 3Qi display. This one-of-a-kind, plug-and-play 10.1-inch display offers two modes–an easy-to-read, real colour, multi-media mode or a crisp, low power e-reader mode. The sunlight-ready, e-reader mode makes it easy to use outdoors.
These screens rival the best e-paper displays on the market today but in addition have video refresh and fully saturated colour. The e-paper mode has 3 times the resolution of the fully saturated colour mode allowing for a high resolution reading experience without sacrifice to super colour fidelity for graphics. In addition these screens can be used in sunlight.

Currently the only tested models are the Samsung N130 & Lenovo S10-2 but they state that it should be compatible with other 10.1” netbooks and are testing more models as we speak.

This is obviously going to be a popular kit and MakerShed are already out of stock. Pre-orders are live for the next batch.

It is rather interesting that a number of new Slate style tablet devices seem to be warring even before they are officially launched, or even proven exist. The two most frequently rumored are definitely the CrunchPad and the even more elusive Apple Tablet. While the Apple Tablet may or may not even exist, we’ve at least seen offical prototypes of the CrunchPad, and it seemed to be generally near completion until all any new info surrounding its release has halted in the last few months.

The CrunchPad shot up the popularity ladder in the Portal shortly after being added, and held the number one spot for a good period of time. Despite seemingly no one calling the CrunchPad a UMPC, lots of traffic clearly interested in the CrunchPad was landing on the CrunchPad’s Portal page.

The CrunchPad has only recently been supplanted by the likes of the Archos 9 [Portal page] and the Viliv X70 [Portal page]:The CrunchPad is a project started by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. In July of 2008, an article titled “We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It.” written by Arrington, went up on TechCrunch. To date that article has produced 1,235 comments in the comment section of the article alone and also countless numbers of articles from other sites in response. Between that time and a month or two ago, the CrunchPad has received quite a bit of attention with various prototypes spotted and a good deal of news and search attention. Note the news reference volume in the graph below which shows how frequently the CrunchPad is searched for (compared to Archos 9 for context):The most recent news that seemed to decry an imminent release of the CrunchPad was that Michael Arrington had teamed up with a small company in Singapore called Fusion Garage for the design, and there is another entity apparently called CrunchPad Inc. which may or may not be involved in getting the device produced (or could possibly be a renaming of Fusion Garage itself).

But much of this news is from back in July. There were reports (read: rumors) that stated that a CrunchPad event may be held at the end of July, or in August, launching or otherwise officially declaring the final CrunchPad device. That date has since come and gone, and here we are, a few days from November, and it seems like all has been quiet on the CrunchPad front. So where in the world is Carmen Sandiego the CrunchPad?

Perhaps the CrunchPad has been waiting on Pixel Qi’s technology to develop? This is just a guess, but I don’t see anyone else taking a shot at the question.Pixel Qi is a company (sometimes referred to as the name of the technology itself) that is working on a type of screen technology that promises to bring inexpensive power saving e-ink like screens to mobile computers using existing LCD manufacturing processes. The Pixel Qi site has a small update box that has this to say:

We have passed early reliability testing with flying colors and are still on track to start mass production of our screens in late Q4 2009.

And while it might seem obvious that Pixel Qi would let people know if they have been working on screens for the CrunchPad to generate interest in the technology, and the device, the following was written on the Pixel Qi blog on October 17th under an article titled “Pixel Qi Screens debuting in Tablets”:

While we are supplying screens for tablets (and ebooks, and netbooks too!) and are starting production shortly, including supplying limited volumes earlier than our official mass production start – we can’t say when these products will be announced and sold retail.

Sorry not to be able to reveal more, but our customers: the netbook, ebook and tablet makers really need to announce their products on their schedules.

With a few CrunchPad articles mentioning a November release, I’d say that it is at least possible that the CrunchPad devlopment and the Pixel Qi screens are coinciding, and maybe the CrunchPad hold-up is due in part to Pixel Qi screen technology still working its way out the door.

Alternate theories? Please feel free to share below.

We’ve been hearing rumblings of this for a while now, but it seems that Pixel Qi is now showing its new dual mode power saving screens. Based on the screen featured in the OLPC project’s XO computer. Essentially Pixel Qi has designed an LCD screen which can display just like you would expect a standard screen to do, but it can also toggle to  an E-Ink like mode which uses ambient light to display the on screen image rather than a backlight.

What are the implications for the mobile device user? The screen is one of the single largest power consuming components of modern mobile devices. The ability to turn off the backlight and still be able to see the screen from ambient light would mean large power savings. With the XO laptop, the screen was actually able to stay active while the motherboard turned off. However, modern netbooks are running much different operating systems and hardware than the XO, and aren’t yet designed to be able to accomplish that extra power saving step. The dual mode means that you can still have a full color display at the flip of a switch, then go to the power saving backlight off mode which reads great in direct sunlight and also saves battery life. If Pixel Qi can keep these screens to a reasonable price, I think we’ll see them popping up on netbooks once they hit full production, but the power saving isn’t going to be mind-blowing.

A few things garnered from the following video. You’ll notice that they are demoing the first batch of their screens on what appears to be an Acer Aspire One D150 [Portal page]. It is mentioned that they are stock Acer’s bought online, then modified to work with the new screen. It doesn’t sound like this technology will be coming to our favorite touchscreen devices any time soon as the particulars of touchscreen technology don’t play nice with the visual quality of the Pixel Qi dual mode screen.

If you’ve used a Kindle, you probably know that the refresh rate is rather abysmal compared to a computer screen that you might be used to. I was impressed to see that the transreflective (E-Ink like) mode of the Pixel Qi screen actually retains a rather good refresh rate meaning that you can work just like you would normally even with that mode enabled (they even show a video being played). If it were E-Ink, you would need to toggle out of the mode just to see the mouse move at a reasonable rate.

Take a look a the video below to see the Pixel Qi screen in action:

[CrunchGear]