Among the progress reports delivered at Qualcomm’s analyst day in London this week, hiding between reports of faster handset processors, new dual carrier HSDPA services and Snapdragon and Gobi chip tablet wins, was one announcement more interesting to readers interested in video, about its incredibly low power Mirasol screen technology.
When we first came across this technology, just over two years ago, it was grey, with oversized pixels and ultra slow switching speeds and the only thing that made it interesting was that it used up around 5% of the power of existing LCD screens.
Today the difference is much closer, as LCD screens find ways to reduce their power footprint, usually by depowering themselves for non-video applications, and also as the Qualcomm MEMS technology increases its switching speed, offers color and tries to cope with video. But a significant difference is still there.
Qualcomm’s Mirasol technology uses a tiny amount of ambient light reflected in 1,000s of tiny nanotech style mirrors, and makes the best of any ambient light. So with no backlight for a display, it means that the more light that falls on the screen, such as direct sunlight, the better the image that it gives off. This is very similar to E-Ink screens, which are used in eBook readers such as the Amazon Kindle and the Qualcomm CEO, Paul Jacobs told an audience of analysts that a 5.7 inch diagonal screen was going into production, color and video capable.
He predicted another change that these screens would bring, ‘There will be a time when there is no need for us to design mobile phones screens which black out after 30 seconds, to preserve battery life, because these screens will take so little power.’
He said that already a dedicated Mirasol fabrication plant has been built in Taiwan which would deliver in volume in the last quarter and turn up in products by early next year. The output is destined for eBook readers and possibly handsets and tablets, and the factory is a partnership with Foxlink.
Qualcomm also showed off a second quarter white paper from Pike Research on energy efficient displays for eReaders which showed that the 5.7 inch screen could show 30 frames per second video for almost 10 hours non-stop. E-Ink screens were rated at a mere 4.7 hours for an existing 7 inch devices and the nearest to the Mirasol screen being 6.3 hours from a 6.1 inch VGA LCD screen with the backlight turned down 50%.
Clearly Qualcomm is not comparing like with like and a 6.1 inch screen is 15% bigger and uses 15% more power, and a 7 inch screen is clearly close to 30% bigger. But even so, the numbers are impressive especially given that the LCD screens have been improved upon non-stop for 20 years, and this new technology is at the start of its working life.
The Mirasol screens will likely appear in 5.7 inch eReader devices in the first instance which compares well with the Kindle and should generate more than twice the battery life of something like two weeks elapsed time and roughly 15 reading hours for the existing Pixel Qi E-Ink technology, compared to 35 hours reading time and an elapsed time of a month for Mirasol. This could lead to eReaders capable of rendering video and HTML pages and yet still be leagues ahead in battery life over say an iPad.
It’s no coincidence that the Amazon Kindle already has a cellular radio chip from Qualcomm, and it is likely that Qualcomm has not committed to a factory for such low power screens without a firm customer. All of which might suggest that it could be a next generation Kindle that first takes advantage of such a screen. Whatever it is, it will be with us in Q1 or Q2 2011.