eli5 What is the difference between a GameBoy screen (not backlight) and an E-Ink screen on devices like a Kindle?
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The original Game Boy without a backlight, was an older generation LCD, liquid crystal display. It works, by electrically charging a film embedded in the glass of the screen.
LCD screens, do not produce a backlight of their own, so they don’t work if you don’t have an alternate source of light to light the screen. Future generations of LCD displays and newer led displays have backlights to solve that problem.
E-ink screens work in a similar principal, but instead of a film behind glass activated via electric current, it’s more like individual pixels which are lit up on the surface of the reader itself. E-ink works more like a pencil or pen would, and changes the color of the surface of the reader itself. It still needs an external light source to be red however, backlit or otherwise though.
The Gameboy screen is LCD, with no power it is blank. With power the pixels can turn on and off. It uses a reflective material so that light falling on the screen is seen in “white” pixels and blocked in black ones.
E-Ink is completely different. With no power it shows whatever it was last ordered to show. The “pixels” are like little balls that are black on one side and white on the other. The only reason an E-Ink display blanks itself is to avoid fading of the black side of the balls. You only need to use power to flip the balls to the side you want, which makes for very, very low power consumption.
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