Re: Color Display? Message #3 Posted by uhmgawa on 2 Aug 2012, 4:41 p.m., in response to message #2 by LHH
Quote:
There's probably now way around it if HP wants to stay in the game.
It seems to depend on what game you're interested to play
in the current market.
Adding a color-able display to a design isn't much of a
cost issue in and of itself, but it sets the prospect
on a slippery slope.
A transmissive, back lit color display requires a substantially
higher current source to accommodate the backlight
and the RGB controller.
So as a practical and economic concession rechargeable secondary
cells enter the design.
Even given the energy density available in contemporary
lithium, etc.. secondary cells, this is a sizeable envelope to
accommodate in the enclosure. Aside from that we have now
added periodic feeding of the rechargeable cell into the
usage model for the device which is a significant departure from
the unattended years of quiescent battery life available
from established predecessors.
And it doesn't make too much sense to incorporate
a color display into a
design without the corresponding computational power to do it
justice. So here an increase in processor power is a likely
inclusion which inflicts its own toll on
the current consumption budget.
And if we've come this far, what have we engineered other than
a repackaged cell phone with a customized calculator keyboard?
While I don't doubt there is some market for such a product,
it isn't going to enjoy the volume of either cell phones,
media players, or at the familiar end of the spectrum:
use-and-drop calculators rendering to
monochrome segment/graphic displays and feeding from
replace-every-ten-years primary cells.
Aside from all that it is unclear
if a self-illuminated display is warranted given mainstream
target usage for such a device as it arguably is
for cell phone and media players. I'm sure some here
believe interaction with a calc as a solitary activity
under arbitrary conditions
is valid use case. But I expect more often it is a tool
supporting another activity already being
performed under ambient illumination -- including direct
sunlight where a back lit transmissive display is nearly
unusable.
I'd defer the assessment of such a product to the
folks projecting sales volume in their market pyramid
strata of interest.
The required engineering components have been
available entirely off the shelf for at least a decade.
|