Some years ago there was this „paperlike kindle“ that was advertised with: „you can read it in bright daylight!“ and then we never heard about this invention again.
Edit: thanks for your input. I think I understand now.
In: Technology
There are phones that are decent in direct sunlight, the ones with over 1500 nits.
But there is one phone that I believe actually truly works like a charm in direct sunlight and that is the S24 Ultra, because it had 2600 nits of brightness and an anti-glare screen
Kindle and similar devices work fine as a reader. My wife has one that’s several years old and still uses, mostly on vacation because it’s great for reading on the beach. But they are unable to show anything other than black and white text.
1. Sunlight is really, really, really bright.
2. Reflective display tech *sucks* for a phone’s use case. They’re low res, slow refresh (scrolling a page is agony), the colors are off, etc.
For phones, High res and High-refresh are mandatory. We’re talking 1080p and 60hz minimum, ideally 120hz+)
Monochrome e-ink phones are… Niche. You need to *really* want an e-ink screen, and put up with significant trade-offs
Color e-ink is only just getting ready for mainstream for static e-readers (Should be nice for comics), and a few years behind monochrome performance for mobile device usage.
That said, BlackBerry (and many other devices) used to use “transflective” displays. They are LCD’s with back lights… But which can also reflect bright light, so they remain clear in direct sunlight. Not sure about refresh/resolution limitations…. But the whole world left them behind.
I still use my e-ink Kindle. Can’t stand the glare of modern screens. Can’t stand having to change the font. Old school Kindle did it right the first time.
> and then we never heard about this invention again.
Maybe you live under a rock, but Kindle and other brands of e-ink-based readers are available and very widely used. Those are however obviously not phones, but for reading. They have a slow refresh rate and are usually a single color, rarely up to maybe 8 of them. People want to watch videos on their screens, not just read newspapers, so they don’t usually buy phones based on e-ink, but a select few options are available.
The tradeoff for “read it in broad daylight” was “monochrome only” (though I think there are color versions now), and “very slow response time” (hundreds of milliseconds).
You would not be happy with an e-ink phone display, even though you could read it in broad daylight.
What do you mean some years ago? e-readers basically all use e-ink technology which you can read perfectly in sunlight. these are just not very useable as smartphone/tablet screens. (there was one tablet that tried in the last year, it was okey-ish)
“We” had phone screens that were well visible in very bright sunlight. The Lumia phones adjusted the screen colors in bright sun and it worked really well
Not sure about e ink but Samsungs newest flagship phone, they combined a matte finish with super high brightness and it looks great even in direct sunlight
In simplest words, those technologies have very poor display capabilities — low refresh rates, poor colors, and images can appear pixelated. We are all used to seeing crisp colors with higher refresh rates and smooth animations, so not much people buy those phones.
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