Qualcomm has demonstrated some new Mirasol display technology at the Society for Information Display ‘Display Week’ annual showcase of the display industry, Vancouver 2013 (or SID2013 for short). Last year Qualcomm was at the same show and won a Silver award for Mirasol technology but this year revealed some interesting mock-up devices using the display technology. Also some products based on the Mirasol display are about to come to market “very soon” reports the video commentator.
The Mirasol display is a reflective display which uses Interferometric Modulation. It relies upon the ambient light where you are for you to be able to read it, though frontal light can be provided; built into the device bezel. The display technology could be called a colour competitor to e-ink, as it consumes a lot less power that LCD or OLED equivalents, it is always on and is best viewed in good ambient light - like an e-ink display.
Qualcomm describe the Mirasol display technology like this: “Mirasol displays are designed to sip where others gulp. No backlights. No constant image refresh. That’s old school. We know where you stand on battery life, and we think we can help.” You can read more about the technology here.
Next generation Mirasol – much higher ppi
Offering a much higher ppi than the current generation of Mirasol displays Qualcomm showed off mock-ups using the next-gen Mirasol display. This refined Mirasol screen was shown on a Smartwatch 1.6-inch display with a resolution of 600x600 pixels, and also a 5.1-inch screened smartphone with a resolution of 2560x1440 (577ppi). These next gen Mirasol displays will not be coming to market very soon, the video commentator says it will be at least a couple of years before they make it into products. The developments do show that Qualcomm is continuing to push the envelope for display technology and increase the quality of its low power Mirasol offerings.
Having had a hands on and look at the Mirasol displays, both current and next-gen, the Engadget reporter says that the system does deliver crisp images, especially the next-gen high ppi version, but there is a silvery tint and less rich colours are on offer, compared to backlit technologies, much of the time. The huge plus of using around 6x less energy and being always-on might be attractive for some applications though. Smartwatches are an obvious target, where you just want to glance at the time without activating a sleeping display.
