Modifying ultra-mobile PCs for sunlight readability
One of the biggest challenges to “mobile computing” (besides battery life) is outdoor readability. (If you’ve ever squinted through your sunglasses trying to dial on your windows mobile phone, you know what I’m talking about).
Recently I had an old EO 72xx UMPC upgraded to a transflective screen. It cost a few hundred dollars for them to treat the LCD with some sort of new surface and then replace the touch panel with another type with some sort of glare reduction. You can get these transflectivized screens and conversions from http://www.mp3car.com (Disclaimer: I used to work there :). I then brought up google maps on both units and took them outside to get a comparative.
In the picture you can see the top, washed out picture is the normal LCD, and the bottom picture is the transflectivized unit. Here are a few more pictures of the two units….
transflective unit in sunlight
unmodified unit - you can see the camera’s reflection, but the map is very washed out.
worst conditions - direct sunlight, bad off-angle, no shade.
Another pathologically bad angle - you can still see the transflective unit.
(thank you http://tabletpc2.com/ !)
[…] of Damien Stolarz ( via JKKMobile ), we have learned of some technology from Advanced Link Photonics that will make […]
Thanks for the info!
Linda A. Epstein
http://TabletPc2.com - http://.UltraMobilePCs.com
Totally agree.
Advanced Link Photonics has worked on my 8.9″ notebook with resistive touch.
It is readable anywhere now includeing under direct sunlight, lol.
We had one of our Q1P SSD’s converted by them and the results were great. I work for a wildland suppression agency and we use Q1’s and toughbooks in the field a lot. This treatment is better than any of the stock “outdoor readable” screens we have seen on the market. We plan on sending in our remaining units as time and the current fire season allows. I only wish the UMPC manufacturers would start building units with theses screens in them in the first place.