Palm Receives Display Technology Patent

After some time I decided this was actually a potentially useful, viable patent (assuming it ever sees the light of day in a shipping device).

Here are some of the initial concerns I'd have with this technology--anyone with a good understanding of the principles of LCD technology feel free to chime in with more info:

#1 Will Palm ever actually incorporate this technology into a shipping device?

#2 Will consumers stand for a handheld or smartphone that "goes mono"in this day of color LCDs on nearly all mobile devices?

#3 Why is it taking Palm so long to arrive at incorporating any kind of power-saving technology into their products?

#4 Wouldn't this technology be best utilized mated to intermittent power-saving steps such as CPU downthrottling, wireless "sleep" modes and automatic dimming of the LCD's backlight while still in color mode?

#5 How will existing color-only software handle being forced into monochrome? Many developers would balk at again having to rewrite their software in order to preserve basic functionality just to accomodate a Palm Garnet OS (presumably OS 5.x is where this would appear) hack.

#6 Palm is not in the LCD business-are they going to have to shop this tech around to Sharp, Sony etc or can this be achieved solely through software using the current Sharp/Sony LCDs?

#7 Palm's recent trend has been to have screen backlights that cannot be turned off entirely. Does this mean they are going to permit color LCDs with the backlight completely off if the user would prefer that over monochrome?

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX

No, in my opinion there would be no need for any change to existing code to make this happen. The system would simply map the colors that the developer had indicated to the nearest grayscale value. It would be easy to make this transparent. In fact, the system already does some mapping like this when dealing with colors that the screen doesn't support. Of course, some games that used contrasting colors with the same grayscale equivalent might not be too usable. But do you really want to be playing games when your battery is getting low? (If so, just switch the feature off.)

#6 Palm is not in the LCD business-are they going to have to shop this tech around to Sharp, Sony etc or can this be achieved solely through software using the current Sharp/Sony LCDs?

I don't think this would require anything different in terms of LCD hardware. It might require some special drivers for existing LCD panels, which Palm or an ODM would need to develop, but I think we're only talking about a change at the software level.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog

I doubt that that would really save much if any battery life. The power savings of a monochrome display isn't that you don't have to display color, it's that you don't need a backlight most of the time. Having white backlighting on would effectively make it just a color screen displaying black and white.

I doubt that that would really save much if any battery life. The power savings of a monochrome display isn't that you don't have to display color, it's that you don't need a backlight most of the time. Having white backlighting on would effectively make it just a color screen displaying black and white.

I heard to the contrary...

Assuming all other variables are the same, an 8bit color screen uses less power than an 16bit color screen. I'm no expert, but between this and the video memory requirement, it seems to make sense.

"Do you know the difference between an error and a mistake? Anyone can make an error, but that error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it."
-Grand Admiral Thrawn

the secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that's even worse

My PDAs: Visor --> Visor Neo (blue) --> Zire 71 --> Tungsten T3 (with 4 of 6 screws still remaining) ~?~> zodiac 2?

In theory, perhaps, but in terms of overall power consumption, the LCD itself is miniscule compared to the backlight.

Shipping device? As in this tech comes with new Palm models are did that sentence have another meaning i missed?

Yeah, that's what he meant. Unfortunately there's no guarantee that this will show up anytime soon, if ever--remember that the patent was filed for over three years ago, and Palm may not even care about it anymore, even if they had a plan for implementation then.

Yes, Bill Gates is certain to be scouring the web looking for the latest innovation in PalmOS hardware, considering what great interest his company has in the antique PDA market. Even more so given that Microsoft is a software company.

-------------------------------
Pocketfactory.com

And in any event, it's doubtful that this is an actual technology so much as it is a patent on an idea.

Besides, Palm needs to field at least ONE model with a 320*480 screen for the forseeable future. What better than a TX on the low end and a ultra thin metal bodied unit on the high end ($400ish)? They can even stick 2gb of flash in it and call it a "personal media manager" or some such trendy non-PDA moniker.

No, Palm needs at least one stylish, well built device that echoes the V & m500 series. Style has been absent from Palm's cookie cutter devices for too many years now. A solid 1-2 punch of a super thin HVGA PDA & a thin, antenna-less Treo Hollywood (even if it is WinMob) would be the thing to get Palm back on their feet styling-wise.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX

VGA on a PPC is a useless battery burner (and video lagger) for the most part. Anything bigger than HVGA needs to be on a bigger screen. Give me a 5 inch vga screen, and I'm a happy lad.