Hasta La Gadget!

To cut a long story short, Onkyo’s LPF10M01 is basically a netbook’s screen sans (most of) the netbook. 10.1 inches of LED-backlit LCD get covered in a 1,024 x 600 pixel array and are backed up by 250 nits of brightness and a 500 to 1 contrast ratio. The big selling point here is the inclusion of an HDMI input — still something of a rarity in picture frames — which sidles up alongside a USB port, SDHC and Memory Stick card reader, and 512MB of integrated memory. We’re fancying the flexibility of using it as a secondary display or as part of some truly minimalist desktop environment, but doubt many will be won over by the austere 140 degree horizontal viewing angle, which narrow down to a zany 110 on the vertical axis. Anyhow, it launches on August 6 in Japan for around ¥19,800 ($227).

Onkyo busts out HDMI-connected 10.1-inch picture frame originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 05:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost two and a half years since Pixel Qi spun off from OLPC and promised to bring its dual-mode, power efficient display to laptops, tablets, and e-readers. For those who haven’t followed our small obsession with the 3Qi screen technology (shame on you!) it promises the best of both worlds: full-color graphics in a normal LCD mode, but also the ability to turn off the backlight to morph into a grayscale, e-paper like display. And while we’ve seen it demoed at tradeshows (and more tradeshows!), we haven’t been able to get our own grubby hands on the much-lauded display. Until now, of course.

No, the 3Qi display still isn’t shipping in any commercially available products, but Pixel Qi is at long last offering a $275 10.1-inch screen replacement kit for netbooks through MakerShed. Needless to say, we jumped — nay, leaped — at the chance to finally get the display into our laboratories, roll up our sleeves and get to crankin’. That’s right, we got out the screwdriver, wrangled up an old Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 netbook and swapped in the 3Qi display for Lenovo’s glossy panel. You’re surely sitting on a metric ton of questions. Was it hard to swap out? Has the screen been everything we’ve ever fantasized about and more? Is it really 80 percent more power efficient than standard LCDs? We’ve got plenty of answers as well as a step-by-step how-to after the break.

Continue reading How-to: install Pixel Qi’s 3Qi display on your netbook (and why it’s worth it)

How-to: install Pixel Qi’s 3Qi display on your netbook (and why it’s worth it) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At E3 this past summer, we got our first taste of the Nintendo 3DS, and early impressions were good: compelling 3D effect sans glasses from its Sharp-sourced parallax barrier LCD. But, as soon as we moved the thing it became clear that the viewing angle on the effect is woefully slim. This is a problem DoCoMo is said to have at least reduced with its glasses-free LCD, relying on eight lenticular lenses to offer a 30 degree viewing angle — on the horizontal plane. Vertically you still have to be perfectly aligned, but the company hopes to remove that restriction before products based on this tech are released in the next year or two. It’s a bit early, but we’re already having flashbacks to young LCD manufacturers battling to deliver the widest viewing angles while maintaining full contrast. Hopefully that means in the not-too-distant future everyone will have 180-degree 3D LCDs — and they’ll all be dirt cheap, too.

DoCoMo’s glasses-free 3D LCD panel could make the 3DS look decidedly first-gen originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Everyone wants an OLED display on their cellphone, right? Ok, maybe not everybody, especially when compared to regular AMOLED, but we certainly want, no demand, a 4-plus inch Super AMOLED on our next Android smartphone. Problem is, there just aren’t enough to go around according to iSuppli. An issue compounded by the fact that Samsung, the world’s largest AMOLED panel manufacturer, gets first crack at its displays in support of its massive growth plans for 2010, leaving companies like HTC to look elsewhere as we’ve already heard. That leaves LG, the only other source for small AMOLED panels, to shoulder the burden until the two can ramp up production, or until more players can enter the market. Samsung hopes to significantly boost production in 2012 when it brings a new $2.2 billion AMOLED facility on-line. Meanwhile, Taiwan-based AU Optronics and TPO Display Corp. plan to introduce AMOLED products by the end of 2010 or early 2011. Until then there’s always the venerable LCD which will continue to dwarf AMOLED shipments for many years to come. See the numbers after the break.

Continue reading iSuppli: OLED panel shortage a concern for Android smartphone makers

iSuppli: OLED panel shortage a concern for Android smartphone makers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jul 2010 05:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve always been fairly fond of Samsung’s Touch of Color design scheme, so we’re glad to see it’s still firmly in place on the company’s new “eco-friendly” LED displays. The outfit’s debuting its 50 and 30 series panels today, with the BX2350 and BX2335 both offering a 2ms response time, 1080p resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio and a rather unique new feature called Magic Return. Put simply, this allows users working with two monitors to have their desktop automatically moved to a powered-on screen if one screen happens to shut down — Sammy doesn’t mention if both monitors have to be in this new series, but we suspect those details (along with price and availability dates) will seep out soon.

Continue reading Samsung pushes out BX2350 and BX2335 1080p monitors

Samsung pushes out BX2350 and BX2335 1080p monitors originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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