While LCDs offer a much better viewing experience when compared to phat CRT monitors, they certainly don’t come up tops if there ever was an award for efficiency. Clairvoyante aims to change that notion by thinking of a fix, and the result of the company’s brainstorming is the PenTile RGBW display. According to Clairvoyante, this new display will be able to help both notebook and cellphone batteries last up to 50% longer, giving devices the ability to last the distance. Here’s a little trivia - the “W” in the PenTile RGBW stands for white, which means you not only get red, green, and blue subpixels in each pixel, there is also a white subpixel within.

The main objective of throwing in the white subpixel would be to achieve a much brighter result, reducing the need to have more backlight. This is where the power savings part kicks in, but there are drawbacks to this positive development. Throwing in an extra subpixel results in each pixel being 33% larger as it lets more light shine through, which results in a much lower resolution. How will this affect the final image? Apparently, our human eyes might not be able to tell the difference according to the folks at Clairvoyante, but until I lay my eyes on one of these new PenLite RGBW displays, I’ll take that anecdote with a little pinch of salt.

That’s not all though, as the techniques mentioned above also enable the backlight to be dynamically adjusted according to the scene that is currently on display. Imagine having an equally bright image with less power Clairvoyante won’t be resting on their laurels though, as they are working on a sharpening routine that improves the overall image quality as well. Hopefully the size of the pixels will be able to shrink in the next iteration before a commercial release. According to Clairvoyante, they will be shipping software that controls this hardware to manufacturers before the year is over, so we can keep our fingers crossed that PenTile RGBW equipped screens will hit the market early next year.

Source: Gizmodo