My guess is it's the quality of the LCD. I've always noticed a difference in sharpness between my older versus newer CE devices. My CE 1.0 Casio A-10 and Compaq C140 H/PCs and my CE 2.01 Palm-size PCs, for example, have that faded appearance on the screen, while my CE 2.11 Casio E-15's monochrome LCD display is very sharp. The older LCDs typically render 2-bit grayscale
(four gray levels
) versus the 4-bit grayscale
(16 gray levels
) on my E-15.