I used to have a GBA that didn’t have any brightness, I don’t understand how that works, if you turned of the lights you couldn’t see anything. I also don’t get why isn’t it used in modern devices, like using that technology to make a kindle with a colored screen would be cool and useful.
In: Engineering
LCD screens work in by blocking light. Modern screens have a backlight that shines outward through a color filter and an LCD filter. All the LCDs do is alter the liquid crystal orientation to block more or less of the backlight.
The Nintendo Gameboy had to deal with being a portable system that ran on AA batteries. The engineers could add a backlight (increasing the size, weight, and cost of the system), but would either have to sacrifice play time before the batteries died or make the system use more batteries*. Instead they opted to use a mirror. The “backlight” is just reflected light. That’s why it didn’t have adjustable brightness, but also why you could play it in full daylight with no issues. The color quality of these screens was not very good. Good color from filters needs a bright source light with plenty of the color you are wanting. A reflective LCD only has the light color available in its environment, so the color quality would change drastically based on where you were at. You need a steady source to guarantee the proper quality and brightness to get a good color image.
Even though this setup is very power efficient, it’s still not as efficient as the Kindle’s e-ink screen. The kindle just uses power to change the displayed image. Once its on the screen, no power is needed to keep it there. An LCD has to continually feed power to the screen to maintain an image.
*Sega took the route of having a backlight and color screen for the Game Gear. It used ~~8~~ 6 AA batteries compared to 4 for the Gameboy, still had worse battery life, and was way larger and harder to carry around.
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