[bananicorn]

This is the same type of screen used as in the pebble smartwatches[0], right?

Honestly, I wonder why that technology hasn't been used for anything like the Thinkpad in the video - I'd love to have such a device!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_(watch)#Hardware

[pareidolia]

No, the Pebble used a Sharp Memory LCD, a different transflective technology. It can only do greyscale while pixelQi uses prisms to separate the colors. That's why you get color with backlight and greyscale out in the sun.

[ryukafalz]

> It can only do greyscale

Eh? My Pebble Time has a color screen, and it sure is transflective.

[corgihamlet]

The pebble time has a display like an old Game Boy Color

[kiririn]

I can speak only for the Pebble Time Steel, but it is leaps and bounds better than the gameboy color.

I would kill for an equivalent display in a laptop - saturated colours and eink readability in direct sunlight with 30hz refresh

[AshamedCaptain]

And so does Pixel Qi. They're both LCD, after all.

[amiga-workbench]

"transflective" is just a broad description of displays which take in light and reflect it back, implementations and drawbacks vary.

[Woung1938]

The most plausible explanation is that the tech is patented to such a degree that producing this kind of solutions is just not economically viable.

[AshamedCaptain]

Always with this excuse, but I really doubt it. There's just a million manufacturers of this or technology similar to this. Many of them have failed and people usually would only notice and care _after_ they failed.

[mbar84]

Considering how long ago the OLPC project was, hopefully the patents are running out soon.

[Qwertious]

Patents aren't the main problem here; the lower refresh rate and resolution mean not many people want it.

Fewer people wanting it means lower economy of scale and higher prices, which means even fewer still.

[Qwertious]

The most plausible explanation is that it's expensive because there's no economy economy of scale, and that there's no economy of scale because people don't want to pay extra for a worse quality screen even if it has a slightly better battery life.