Hacker News Reader

Actually, if you removed the backlight of the LCD, you'd find the LCD does become worse in darkness, but then performs significantly better in sunlight. Think classic Game Boy.

This fact is the basis of transflective LCDs, which can work both in sunlight as well as in darkness conditions, and have improved up to the point they compete in contrast with e-Ink panels.

View on HN

"significantly better in the sunlight" is not how I'd describe any pre-backlight Gameboys, honestly (including the original). The levels of light in which you could usefully play them were a very narrow band that I would describe as "lots of ambient light but no direct light at all". Hell even most of the front lights you could mount on a Gameboy created unviewable hotspots of light around the edges.

eInk has a much much wider range of workable light levels than any lcd I've used, with or without a backlight. The recent trend away from diffusion layers on lcd glass has also made it a lot worse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com