Japan Display Inc. (JDI) has developed a new paper-like color reflective LCD, which has very low power consumption and can display moving pictures. Reflective liquid crystals operate without the use of a backlight. Instead, they rely solely on ambient light. This allows the device to consume very little power. Their obvious drawbacks is that obviously such displays are useless in the dark and the usability drastically falls when lighting is scarce or low.

JDI developed two versions of the 7.03-inch display. The high-reflective version has an XGA resolution (1024 x x768,) a high reflectance of 40%, a 5% NTSC ratio, a 30:1 contrast ratio and consumes 3mW, when displaying still images. The second 'high color gamut' version has the same size, a slightly lower resolution (1024 x 576) a lower reflectance (28%) and most importantly, a higher NTSC ratio of 36%.

key technologies used by JDI for the new LCD display include an optical property optimization process, which adopted a newly-developed scattering layer. In addition, JDI fabricated SRAMs in each pixel using LTPS technology so power is minimized for still screen images.

JDI will demonstrate the display at FPD International Japan 2012, held October 31 through November 2, 2012, in Pacifico Yokohama, Yokohama, Japan.