Ambient light makes mobile-display tech 'iMoD'

SAN DIEGO--What do a butterfly and a cell phone display have in common? More than you'd think.

A couple of years ago, a display start-up called Iridigm began working on a mobile-display technology that reflects ambient light like the human eye sees bright, rich colors--in much the same way light reflects off a butterfly's wing.

You're probably thinking, yeah, OK, that sounds kind of awesome. But Qualcomm liked Iridigm's idea a lot. So much, in fact, that it bought the whole company in 2004. Qualcomm was showing off the interferometric modulator display (iMoD) technology, still in the research and development phase, at the first-ever Society for Information Display's Mobile Displays Conference here.

The key is that iMoD displays don't need a backlight, a major consumer of battery life in mobile devices. Instead, iMoD reflects ambient light. So that means you have to be outside, right? Qualcomm actually hopes you will be. A major concern of most of the mobile display manufacturers here is how to make displays readable in direct sunlight, which is difficult, if not impossible, with many LCD displays on the market today. If, perchance, there's not enough light, as in a darkened movie theater, Qualcomm will use a front-lighting technology to light up the screen.

Right now the company is working on the iMoD Bichrome 1.8-inch display, which mobile-phone handset manufacturers will buy and install as the secondary or external display. It's called Bichrome because it only comes in two colors right now--gold and black. (They're working on full color too--64 and 512 color displays--but that's a little while off). Qualcomm says the 1.8-inch screens will have a 128-by-160-pixel resolution and a wide viewing angle.

Besides cell phones, Qualcomm is looking to digital audio players and handheld or wrist-worn gadgets as other applications for iMoD displays. But it's staying mum on when the iMoD Bichrome display will start appearing in any gadgets.