What’s Happening at Pixel Qi – Mary Lou Jepsen’s Blog

I’ve read some news about how tablet projects are late because they are waiting on Pixel Qi. I don’t usually respond to the articles that take a different view of us than we ourselves do – but in this case I just want to clarify a fact:

We aren’t late!

We are starting production on schedule at the end of year and ramping up volumes in early next year… We are very proud of our ability to create a great new product-line over the last year amid the collapse of many banks and dry up of venture capital (this while we were seeking and gaining our first funding round) and in the subsequent quarters, while we were developing our new product-line, we weathered the great uncertainties of the LCD manufacturers: who faced bankruptcy and underwent massive restructuring to survive. Believe me, we were far from a priority with our manufacturing partners given these conditions.

Now the publishing industry seems poised on a major transition , and we appear to be the only screen entering mass production designed for reading that offers color, video, longer battery life and works as-is with existing software stacks (from OS to viewers) and in any lighting condition including the pitch black and outside in direct sunlight and integrates easily with touchscreens. It’s fun work – and we are hiring more and more to address the great demand for our products. Consider to join us!

It seems a comment that I made at the Magazine Innovation Summit in NYC this week should be clarified:

While we are supplying screens for tablets (and ebooks, and netbooks too!) and are starting production shortly, including supplying limited volumes earlier than our official mass production start – we can’t say when these products will be announced and sold retail.

Sorry not to be able to reveal more, but our customers: the netbook, ebook and tablet makers really need to announce their products on their schedules.

New Subject – Battery Life Standards
While I have you I wonder how you all feel about MobileMark? This is the standard that sets battery life measurements with screen turned down to 27% brightness or 60 nits (max brightness is usually 220 nits). A nit is a unit of brightness. This from the latin “nitare” which means “to shine”, as opposed to the German origin of the more common use of the word nit – from the egg of a parasitic insect, usually a louse.

In office lighting, a piece of paper that reflects 60 nits is quite readable. Our screens with good office lighting also reflect 60 nits or more – I measured 120 nits in our offices on Friday. This with the backlight off. The exact reflectance measurement depends very much on the room lighting.

A normal LCD screen is “washed-out” by the office lighting since it can’t use the room lighting to show the image. The backlight is what creates the brightness (nits) on a normal LCD screen. For traditional transmissive LCDs, the backlight has to be cranked up higher because it competes with the room lighting. So it’s hard to see a normal LCD screen at 60 nits of brightness because 60 or more nits of office lighting can also be reflecting off it, competing with the LCD’s own image, often obliterating the screen image viewability completely. This is mostly true for matte reflection screens. There are also “glare-type” screens. These screens look shiny. The user sees their own reflection in them – no matter how beautiful you are this can be a problem: It’s distracting and hard to read because of all the reflections that complete for attention with the screen image.

Back to battery life measurement standards:

MobileMark seems to (according to our laptop-making customers) require that we also crank the backlight up for the power measurements to the same level as other screens that aren’t reflective and in fact are hard to read even at 60 nits backlit brightness in roomlight – this even though with no backlight the Pixel Qi screen can exceed 60 nits of brightness without any “wash-out” or annoying glare.

Does this make sense?

- Mary Lou