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.