Novel Mobile Display Tech Could End Up on Your Car Dashboard

Diginfo reports on a novel type of mobile display, presented by Japan Display. Japan Display actually showed off three prototypes, which bring together mobile display tech from Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi. Japan Display was jointly established six months ago by those three companies.

Japan Display was showing off three different displays: first, a five-inch HD 438 ppi smartphone display; second, a seven-inch 2560x1600 pixel tablet display; and finally—and perhaps coolest—a 12.2-inch 1920x720 car display. Japan Display achieved that last feat by curving the panel and rounding the edges. (Will we be seeing “smart dashboards” in cars soon?) The displays, as you’ll see in Diginfo’s video, are super thin—less than a millimeter thick, actually.

One reason Japan Display was able to make the displays so thin, according to a rep quoted by Diginfo, is that they integrated the touch-panel directly to the display, “rather than being attached from outside.” They call this tech “Pixel Eyes,” and they say it’ll bring the next wave of pen-drawing on tablets and phones (see “A Stylus You Can Talk To.”)

 Another novel feature of the screens is something Japan Display calls “WhiteMagic” technology. This tech makes use of white pixels in addition to red, green, and blue ones, and in the process drives down backlight power consumption. Though the Japan Display rep is a little unclear on how this is achieved, he says that ultimately WhiteMagic tech can reduce panel power consumption by 40 percent. Or, you can make use of the energy windfall by cranking up the brightness, making a tablet using a Japan Display display more of an outdoor option.

 The tech seems exciting, and should be mass-produced within a year or so. The work from Japan Display is also an example of what happens when rival companies set aside their differences and work together to bring the next generation of technology.