Self charging phones aren't that far away

Just as the headline gave me hope for the future, a giant Verizon pop-up with no close button ruined my day.

"By using polarizing organic photovoltaic cells, however, the LCD-packing gizmo can recycle its own lost backlight energy, keeping itself charged for longer." - wouldn't it be better to make the LCD not lose 75% of its energy?

I have it! It didn't stop it!

"What's really cool is these cells can recycle indoor or outdoor light as well..."

It's self-charging at a rate perhaps slower than the rate at which is discharges, for now, but it is effectively charging itself. The question is does it break even?

That would be neat. But it's essentially impossible with a traditional LCD screen - the physics don't work that way.

The way a backlit LCD works is that the backlight produces light, which goes straight into a polarizer. That polarizer absorbs 50% of the light energy - if it absorbed any less, then the light wouldn't be polarized. Then the light passes through the liquid crystal element to another polarizer, which either passes the light through or blocks it completely.

If you assume that half the screen is lit at any given time, it's physically impossible to not absorb 75% of the light in the polarizer. There are really only two ways to improve this, one is to produce polarized light directly, and the other is to return the lost energy to the device some other way (as this does).