It’s still not clear when the first tablets, netbooks, or other devices with Pixel Qi displays will start to hit the streets. But Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen says that you’ll be able to pick up a DIY kit for installing a Pixel Qi screen in your own device by this summer.

Pixel Qi’s LCD displays combine some of the best elements of a fully saturated color display and a high contrast e-Ink screen. In a nutshell, you can treat the screen as a slightly thicker, more expensive color LCD and never take advantage of the ePaper mode. But you can also turn off the backlight to reduce the screen’s power consumption from 2.5 watts to about 0.5 watts.

And as an added bonus, while the screen looks a bit closer to black and white in this mode (with some faint colors showing), the screen becomes easily readable outdoors. In fact, in ePaper mode, it’s easier to read text in direct sunlight — something which is hardly true for traditional LCD screens.

Pixel Qi has been showing off the new display technology for a while, and typically those demonstrations include Pixel Qi displays retrofitted into off-the-shelf netbooks from companies like Acer and Lenovo. So while there’s no compatibility list yet, it seems like a safe bet that if you have a device with a 10.1 inch display, you’ll be able to use one of these DIY kits to swap out your screen.

There’s no word on pricing yet. Jepsen says the company will be making an announcement prior to the release of the DIY kits.

Pixel Qi’s fancypants display technology allows the company to create LCD screens that look good either in full color, or black and white modes. In black and white mode, the display looks almost like e-Ink, but doesn’t suffer from the slow screen refresh rate that plagues e-Ink. And in color mode, the display looks pretty much like any other LCD. To make things even better, the high contrast black and white mode makes the screens readable in direct sunlight while consuming about 20% of the power used by the screen in full color mode.

I got a chance to check out the displays in person at CES, and I was pretty impressed. So far, Pixel Qi has only been showing off a 10 inch display called the 3Qi, which the company has been demonstrating in off-the-shelf netbooks and which Notion Ink is using for its Adam Tablet.

But in an interview with E-Ink-Info, Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen says the 10 inch display are just the start. Without giving away too many details, she says that Pixel Qi will be announcing new sizes “in the future.” She also suggests that Pixel Qi has a number of customers that are “pulling us into a variety of new product categories.”

Does that mean we’ll start seeing Pixel Qi displays in tablets, phones, portable media players, or eBook readers? I have no idea. But I’m looking forward to finding out.

via Engadget

The folks at Notion Ink just sent me a few photos and videos of the company’s upcoming Adam Tablet, showing off some of the device’s coolest features. The Adam sports a Pixel Qi display which looks great in high contrast/black and white mode in direct sunlight. Indoors it features full color saturation and can handle video playback quite nicely — including Adobe Flash video.

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 isn’t widely available for Google Android yet, but this morning Adobe announced that had made Flash (and Adobe AIR) available to select partners already, with general availability coming soon. Update: Yup, Notion Ink confirms that the demo below is showing Flash Player 10.1, complete with hardware acceleration for the NVIDIA Tegra chipset.

If you check out the video below, you’ll see that the Adam Tablet is already able to play Flash video including a movie trailer from YouTube.

The second and shorter video shows the 3.2MP webcam on the tablet, which can rotate 180 degrees to face the front or back of the device, allowing you to snap photos as if you were carrying an oversized point and click camera, or do video chat with the camera facing your head.

You can check out the videos after the break. The videos are showing the 12.6mm thick version of the tablet. You can also find more photos at Technoholik.

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The Notion Ink Adam Tablet is one of the first devices due out with a Pixel Qi display and NVIDIA Tegra 2 chipset. If you put those things together, what you get is a heck of a lot of positive buzz for a product from a company that most people hadn’t heard about before CES. But it looks like Notion Ink is a few steps closer to bringing the Adam to market. Today the company posted the specs for the tablet on its web site, and tech blog Technoholik has snagged some hands-on photos of what looks like a production sample (as opposed to the rendered images we saw last week or the handcarved wooden prototype I saw at CES in January).

So here’s what we know about the tablet. It has a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel matte (non-glossy) touchscreen which can function as a full color display or as a high contrast (almost black and white), low power display that’s easily readable in direct sunlight. It has a Tegra 2 chipset which combines a low power dual-core ARM A9 CPU with enough graphics power to play 1080p HD video.

The tablet has a 3 cell battery, which should run for up to 16 hours in full color mode. Technoholik claims you’ll get up to 160 hours with the backlight off, but I’m pretty certain that’s not true, since the folks at Pixel Qi tell me you should generally expect to save just a few watts of power by shutting off the backlight. They’re also working on software that will afford greater power savings by allowing the CPU to shut down when the screen is inactive – for instance, when you’re reading an eBook and only need the CPU to power up to flip pages. But I don’t think that technology is available yet.

The Adam tablet supports 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, 2.1 and 3G wireless. And it has a 3.2MP camera that you can rotate so it faces the front or back of the tablet, allowing you to snap pictures or use the tablet as a webcam.

There are 3 USB ports, an HDMI output, A-GPS, and an accelerometer. It will weigh about 1.4 pounds and measure just about half an inch thick.

What we still don’t know is the final price or when the Adam Tablet will be available.

Update: SlashGear has more photos, plus a demonstration of the Adam running Adobe Flash, something that rival tablet the iPad can’t do. What’s interesting is that the Adam uses the Google Android operating system, which doesn’t officially support Flash yet either. So either that’s about to change this week at Mobile World Congress, or Notion Ink has some pretty neat tricks up their sleeves.

via Engadget

This year’s CES has been dominated by 3D TV, eBook readers, and a plethora of tablets. But the Notion Ink Adam tablet manages to stand out from the tablet crowd by sporting some of the hottest new technology. And I really do mean hot, and not just hyped.

First, it’s one of the first devices to use Pixel Qi’s 3qi LCD display which features a higher contrast ePaper mode that uses just 0.5 watts and a full color mode that uses the same 2.5 watts as a standard LCD screen.

Second, the Notion Ink tablet is powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 chipset. Tegra 2 is based on a low power ARM processor and high performance NVIDIA graphics that allow tablets like the Adam to handle 1080p HD video playback without breaking a sweat. The chipset can also handle games that would make an iPhone cry, while still providing excellent battery life.

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I got a chance to catch up with the folks from Pixel Qi this morning. If you’re not familiar with the company, it was founded by Mary Lou Jepsen, one of the designers of the original XO Laptop. And Pixel Qi makes LCD displays that are unlike any you’ve ever seen. When you turn the backlight off, the screen is still readable in a high contrast black and white mode. They actually look like e-Ink displays, but they’re not. Turn up the backlight, and you have full color saturation.

The net effect is that you can put a Pixel Qi display in a netbook, tablet, or eBook reader and have a device that you can read indoors or outdoors. It can handle full motion video. And there’s non of that page refreshing effect that you experience with eBook readers like the Kindle and Nook.

One of the other side effects of using the Pixel Qi display is reduced power consumption. In full color mode, the LCD uses about 2.5 watts of power, which is about what you’d get from any other LCD screen. But when you cut the backlight off, that drops to about 0.5 watts.

The image above shows a standard off-the-shelf Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 that’s been retrofitted with a Pixel Qi display. While there are no plans to sell this particular model, I was told that you can get about an extra hour of battery life by using a Pixel Qi screen in high contrast mode with the backlight off. If you were to put the same screen in a low power ARM-based smartbook or tablet that only uses 7 to 8 watts of power total, then you could see as much as a 30 to 40% increase in battery life by using a Pixel Qi display.

The company is also working with vendors on technology that will allow the CPU to idle when you’re not using the computer to do anything but look at text. There’s no reason to constantly redraw each pixel if you’re reading an eBook or a web page.

There are apparently 6 different companies showing off devices with Pixel Qi screens at CES this week, but most of them are holding private meetings and Pixel Qi isn’t saying who’s got what.But the product categories range from netbooks to tablets, and possibly some other devices. If I see any actual products on the show floor, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Pixel Qi expects to ramp up production this year to the point where it can pump out millions of displays. Most of those will be sold direct to vendors who will then bring out products using the screens. But the company is made up of DIY tinkerers, and does plan to throw a bone to the DIY community by making the screens available to end users. I was told we can expect an announcement along those lines next week.

Want to know what that image at the top of the post looks like in full color mode? Check out the color version after the break, as well as a handful of other pictures showing the New York Times Reader application and video playback in VLC. I’ve also uploaded a short video of the S10-2 with a Pixel Qi Screen.

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Pixel Qi is getting ready to show off its 3qi transflective displays at CES. Founder Mary Lou Jepsen says the first 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel screens are already in production, so all we’re waiting for now are the announcements from companies that will be launching devices using the screens. And first up, we have Notion Ink.

SlashGear got the skinny on an upcoming Notion Ink tablet that runs Google’s Android operating system. The machine will use the NVIDIA Tegra T20 chipset which means it will be able to play 1080p HD video while minimizing overall power consumption. And it will have a Pixel Qi display which operates in two modes: Fully saturated color mode and high contrast, grayscale ePaper mode. The ePaper mode allows the computer to save energy and to be easily readable outdoors.

In other words, thanks to the Pixel Qi display and ARM-based processor, you could essentially treat the unnamed Notion Ink tablet like an eBook reader some of the time, and a fully functional computer (without a physical keyboard or desktop operating system) the rest of the time. Notion Ink says the device will run for up to 8 hours of continuous HD video playback or 16 hours of web surfing over WiFi.

The tablet will support WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G wireless connections as well as GPS. It measures 9.8″ x 6.3″ x 0.6″ and weighs 1.7 pounds. The tablet comes with 16GB or 32GB of onboard flash storage and it has USB, HDMI, mic, headphone, and SD card slots for expansion and peripherals. It also has a 3MP webcam.

Notion Ink is expected to show off the tablet at CES. There’s no word on a launch date or price yet.

You can find more photos at SlashGear.

Over at the official Pixel Qi blog, Mary Lou Jepsen has announced that production is under way on the first batch of their much-heralded displays. Brad reported recently that we would see Pixel Qi kick things off mid-December, so it looks like they may actually be ever so slightly ahead of schedule.

According to Jepsen’s post, the first run will be used in “specialized tablet devices with multi-touch.” She also states that the displays in such devices will become thinner over time, though some customers have stated a preference for a more traditional thickness.

Hoping to get your hands on a Pixel Qi display of your own? Good news – Jepsen says that in Q1 2010 the company will be making a limited number available for DIYers. Details have not been announced, and she asks that individual requests are held until how-to information has been posted.

You’ll also be able to catch Pixel Qi at CES in January 2010 though Jepsen didn’t reveal who they will exhibit with. Not yet, anyway, so stay tuned!

Pixel Qi plans to begin mass production of its low power, high contrast 3qi displays next month. Pixel Qi’s technology allows a screen to be used in two modes. In full color saturation mode, you’d be hard pressed to spot the difference between a Pixel Qi display and a normal LCD. But in an ePaper-like high contrast mode, the color display uses significantly less power which helps prolong battery life. And the display is also easy to read outdoors or in other brightly lit conditions.

Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen, who was also one of the lead designers of the original OLPC XO Laptop, has been showing off glimpses of the company’s 3qi screens for months. But with mass production just around the corner, it shouldn’t be too long before we start to see the displays show up in actual netbooks.

The company isn’t just focusing on netbooks. Pixel Qi is also developing and HDTV that operates with less than 10 watts of power. That’s about 10 times less energy than most HDTVs use, and it’s designed to make high definition TV displays available and practical in places with limited access to power. At just 10 watts, the TV could be operated by battery and charged with a solar panel or crank.

While the 3qi computer screen should be coming soon, there’s no word on a launch date for the HDTV.

via SlashGear

Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen is starting to make a habit of showing teasing us with cool new photos of the company’s upcoming display technology — which still isn’t available to the public yet. Her latest blog post shows an Acer Aspire One netbook outfitted with a prototype Pixel Qi display next to two Dell Mini laptops with anti-glare, and glossy screens. As the picture makes pretty clear, neither Dell laptop can hold a candle to the Pixel Qi display when it comes to visibility under these lighting conditions.

What’s interesting is that this photo was snapped under office lighting. We already knew that the Pixel Qi screen was designed to be easily readable outdoors in direct sunlight. Other displays practically turn into mirrors under those conditions. But some harsh office lights can wreak similar havoc on standard netbook displays from certain angles.