"Sunlight readable" does not mean the same brightness to different people. Different strokes for different folks indeed. Some are willing to look at a display with lower contrast, others (perhaps correlated with being older) like higher contrast. Some desire color strongly and are willing to squint for it, others give up on color in return for more contrast. I've seen the Dell Streak display that some other members of my club use, and they've seen my Nook, and we're all sticking to our choices. Nothing wrong with that.

Many web pages (and apps, and OSs) are designed these days with very low contrast choices of foreground and background colors for text and icons, I personally hate that, but apparently many, at least those who designed it, think it's cool.