Sony Adds White Pixel To ‘White Magic’ Phone Screens

So Sony’s got a brand new TFT LCD. Big whoop. But here’s something to write home to your grandmother about: the 3-inch screen has a switch for “outdoor mode” and “low-power mode”, letting you save battery life for when it’s needed.

As you know, it’s harder to see screens outdoors, which is why some laptop companies have included similar switches in the past. Sony’s low-power mode turns the brightness down by 50 per cent, to 470cd/m2, but can then be pushed to 1000cd/m2 when outdoors, which compares to the iPhone 4′s which is it a constant state of 500cd/m2 brightness. Don’t feel too sad for your iPhone 4 though, as that’s still double the brightness the iPhone 3 had — and at least both phones had touchscreens, unlike Sony’s White Magic.

It works by adding a fourth white pixel to the RGB pixel arrangement, similar to how Sharp added a yellow pixel to its line of TVs a couple of years ago. While these 3-inch screens are obviously well-suited to Sony cameras and Sony Ericsson phones, Sony may well choose to sell them to other manufacturers too, with samples on the offer from October. [Sony via TechCrunch]