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Passive display technologies rock. You’re probably familiar with the Kindle’s e-Ink passive display, but that’s already ancient technology. The future of low-power displays is color video, something the Kindle can only dream of doing. Qualcomm, however, isn’t just dreaming it, they’re living it. The company’s mirasol division was proudly showing off their latest mirasol display with nothing less than full-motion color video at 30 fps. Impressed? We were.
Passive displays are great for saving battery power because they only draw precious electric-juice when changing the pixels on the display. The image continues to persist, sans power, until pixels need to be rearranged again. In Qualcomm’s case, the mirasol display technology uses millions (literally) of reflective mirrors to create an image using reflected ambient light. Somehow, Qualcomm managed to work those tiny mirrors in just the right manner to get color and video working – all the while sipping on battery juice.
Hopefully, we’ll see more color mirasol displays coming to smartphones in the near future.
Qualcomm’s mirasol showing color video @ 30fps! from IntoMobile on Vimeo.
About The Author
Will Park
Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...
