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Cell Phone with Built-in Projector
karvind writes "Siemens researchers have developed a cell phone featuring a built-in projector system. A laboratory model was presented at CeBIT 2005 in Hanover. The system makes it possible to project a complete keypad or display onto a surface. With a special pen, users can write on the virtual keypad and operate the phone's functions. Other projection keyboard concepts can be found here and here"
I want a 1280x1024 projector. They're just projecting a keyboard.
Anyone who has ever used these type of keyboards knows you need a completely steady surface, it needs to be semi-dark so you can see the keyboard, and it hurts the hell out of your fingers to type on a non-giving surface.
None of these aspects are well-suited for portable typing. I want a SELMA hologram for my portable electronics interaction.
Your shiny pates will keep you from the unemployment line
How far does this thing project? Can I set it up across the room and have giant keyboard that I can jump around on, like in Big?
TFA claims:
...but I disagree. It looks big and clunky. Frankly I don't think this feature is worth the added bulk, cost, complexity, and battery-usage. This will remain a gimmick until it can be integrated seemlessly into current cellphones, and more importantly, until the interface is actually smooth and efficient.
"At first glance, the mobile phone looks exactly like a conventional cell phone."
This has got to be the stupidest cell phone idea of the year!
So you'd have to hold the rather klungy cellphone still near a suitable surface and plug the projected keyboard with a thick bluetooth pen? Why not just use morse code by panging your head agaist the wall?
Bluetooth foldable keyboard is a much better choice.
In this concept a virtual touch typist demonstrates he can type directly on a laser-projected keyboard, but this newer concept indicates that a special pad and pen are required. What happened? This was hot a couple years ago...
Wait, no, my bad.
Also what do you really need a projected keyboard on your cell phone for? Is it really that time consuming to put in a new contact with your keypad, or are people writing 20 page business reports and stuff on them? I'm getting too old for this shit.
sup
Read the review from C|net:
m l
http://reviews.cnet.com/4505-6460_7-31293682-2.ht
Very nice technology and all but it requires the user to be stationary, kind of defeating the purpose of a mobile phone.
If they are going to build a projector into a cell phone, then it needs to display the screen on the wall, not a keyboard on a desk. I've long wondered why no one has integrated a projector into a laptop.
I saw something like this presented for palm pilots years ago, when i still used my shitty ol' m505, it looks realy impressive, but its still new technology, so i wouldnt trust it...s p?ID=57 62
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.a
back in 2003 they had a story on this, Old news i say
-EL
-EL
Looks to be yet another solution in search of a problem...Don't get me wrong, I'm sure something useful will evolve out of this tech at some point..
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Here in Canada, major Telcos charge exorbitantly just for the previledge of being able to send and/or view video. These are features that users do not use that much. How many of you send photos via their cell phones on a regular basis?
Now one sees projectors...next will be God knows what...! Maybe it's because I am in Canada and being charged unfairly. What is the experience of others?
Do cell phones really need this much capability? I remember seeing PDA phones a couple years ago. This almost seems like a cosmetic technology-advancement. Something for the sole purpose of wowing people into buying things they don't really need (and odds are, won't use).
When I used to study piano, my teacher would often recomend playing out a scale on a hard wooden surface. This strengthens the fingers significantly; however, I wonder if doing that for a long while might have adverse effects.
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Help me Obi Wan Kenobi!
Help me Obi Wan Kenobi!
- dj
holographic interfaces are not as far off as you may think...
My Nokia 6600 has rudimentary speech recognition software for setting the phone modes and probably (haven't tried it) for selecting the person who you want to call, but it's not working so well that I would trust it yet.
It's been years since I tried speech recognition on computer and I wouldn't want to prepare an entire document that way, but dictating short text message or e-mail could work. "Phone. Text message to Eve. Begin message. I'll buy the wine and food for tonight. Adam. End message. Send."
Of course you could leave a voice message, but that so old technology... ;-)
The owls are not what they seem
If I project this onto my lap, maybe I'll get fewer odd looks on the airplane.
First thought: ta da ta da ta da ta da ta da ta da ta da ta da - Batmaaaaaan. Communicate with symbols projected into the sky.
Second though: wow, I will have to walk around with two suitcases full of batteries.
no dice.
You can't handle the truth.
This is so very close. I want a color projector at minimum 640x480 resolution that I can project on a wall, and a laser projector that will draw a keyboard for me. I want this stuff in a phone, which can be the size of a PDA, and which should have a decent screen on it as well. Provided there is a decent system for writing programs for the phone, that's the convergence device I'll pay for. (Got to have a camera and mp3 player too.) Granted it'll probably be the size of a small palmtop but I want to have all of these devices in one so I don't have to carry around a bunch of stuff. Really I think they could make it not much larger than an iPod as long as it used flash storage.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://www.overclockersclub.com/?read=7328384
Laser keyboards should be able to take up less room though they're probably a bit delicate yet.
they could be made much smaller than they current keyboard applications.
What about both? A projected keyboard and projected screen, coming from a tiny phone sized unit with about the computing power of a laptop two years ago, with actual phone call making ability. :D I have seen the future of computing, wahu!
you have $79,000 (MSRP) availble to you?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The phone in TFA is way too bulky to be an acceptable portable device, so I assume its merely a prototype.
Manufacturers clearly realise that the phone in its current size is a device people find comfortable carrying around. This is the device that will end up converging with all the other gadgets that we geeks like to carry around these days.
Personally, I can't wait for the summer day when I don't have to wear a multi-pocket combat jacket with something stuffed in every pocket - camera, phone, PDA, MP3 player, portable TV (OK, so I don't have one of those).
A projected keyboard may well cause your fingers to bleed but it's not designed as a replacement to a standard tactile piece of hardware - merely something that serves a better purpose than multiple key presses or tapping a tiny screen with a stylus.
Looks like a step in the right direction to me.
can't 'researchers' come up with something useful? That trevor bayliss guy who invented the clockwork radio, now THAT is inventing. These are just lab-monekys churning out cool trinkets for rich kids. Arent there things to invent that satisfy a real need amongst consumers who arent tech-obsessed rich kids?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Maybe the projection system could make up for this by projecting a standard number button array so it can be used. However, it would be a lot simpler if they used a standard number array on the phone itself.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Most of our motor skills require a tool to be really skillful. Because tools react to our actions, and our minds require feedback to interact with things. This projector requires a pen, which looks superfluous, but which will certainly help accuracy and counter the frustration of pushing fingers against an actually blank, flat, smoot surface like a tabletop. But it's kinda big, and has only limited gestures: press and stroke. How about a thin rubber sheet, maybe 0.1mmx10x10cm, with a textured pattern, that the phone projects onto? A video sensor next to the projector (with the phone standing upright, rather than that huge swivel projector) watches the fingertips, like existing projection keyboards. Our fingers will work the surface a lot more nimbly when it reacts. A later generation can cover the sheet with rubberized piezo actuators, or stacked MEMs, for a truly interactive surface. The sheet could be rolled up into the side of a hollow stylus used for more precise pointing when necessary. Make it cheap enough to replace several times a year, and the whole thing starts looking like a real tool, instead of a picture of a tool.
As long as I'm writing SF, how about the MEMs sheet un/rolling itself from the stylus? And including sensors, rather than a video sensor? Or the phone with a fiberoptic jack for projecting the interface image through the sheet itself? Somebody gimme a budget!
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make install -not war
I love the idea of this, and if it was implimented well and extended, you could end up with a device which could transcend the limitations of screen size. Unfortunately, as an ex-owner of a Siemens SL45, which was a pioneering MP3 player phone, I can categorically say Siemens is not a company which will support early adopters of their technology. The phone was fragile and unstable, and their support was arrogant and tardy, Pity, it seemed like a great idea, just like this one...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
So, do you project her in full 5'9" size? Does the projecter belch Laramie smoke to make the virtual experience more real? There are unshaven bikini-clad images available, too.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Sometimes I wonder how such "research" projects manage to get funded? ;-) The projection device is not even any technological breakthrough. I don't get it.
And when he had opened the fifth seal, i saw under the altar the souls of them do, they should send naked pictures of themselvs to us for inclusion in the blitzer interview was directly referring to gore's 1990 education bill, which had a huge impact on taking the small government project known as arpanet into the air, and there came a great voice out of heaven every stone about the old man.
I have no mind, i traded it in open trenches and set it up across the room and have giant keyboard that i have almost uncontrollable urges to murder everyone around you.
yikes
... like Verizon will want this disabled - for your own protection of course!
To use this virtual interface, you'll need to subscribe to Verizon's easy-write(TM) service. It's only $4.99 a month!
#DeleteChrome
I wish they took off. Interesting point though: If you're a touch typist, you don't really need the whole outline; Just two dots to know where the "home row" is.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
http://www.lightblueoptics.com/
Seems like these guys are using LCOS chips to project a real image on the wall with diffuse light. They had a working prototype.
I really want one of these things.
But even then, they have to enter the numbers on by the silly "Stylish, but not very functional" keypad to get them into the phone contact list in the first place! Unless they connect their phones to something else, like a computer, to enter their numbers. Few users do that. Also, I use my cell phone just by dialing the number, and most others I know do this too. There's no good reason not to have the numbers in the usual place.
Some companies still get it, like Avaya.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
cheers mate !
If your cell phone can project a game of Minesweeper onto the bathroom wall...
PHB: Why are you spending so much time in the bathroom?
Peon: Uh... none of your business.
PHB: Why were you tapping on the stall walls for?
Peon: If you were stuck up like me, you're be tapping the walls too.
PHB: Why did you yell "You bastard!" when I walked by?
Peon: Hey! Can't a guy take a difficult dump around her?
PHB: Not in this company!
They merely licensed this technology from a US company.
--- Eat my sig.
So, now I can write the same number of text messages in half the time before the battery runs out? Honestly, these things are called cell phones and this is what they should do - enable you to talk on them for extended periods of time without having to worry about your battery running out. All these additional features added lately are sure cute but in the end only equate to shorter battery life...
It is an Israeli company who invented the virtual
keyboard.
http://www.globes.co.il/DocsEn/did=875104.htm
--- Eat my sig.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
So a projector shouldn't be needed at all. And worse still, there's no feel, so no way to judge where the 'keys' would be. So how can you 'touch-type' with this?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
I'm typing this reply on my Treo 600 while sitting in a cafe. This is last-gen tech that I got for a couple hundred on eBay. it's smaller than the phone in TFA.
It would be neat if something like this is integrated into a PDA so we could read ebooks (or anything else you would use your PDA for) on a larger screen. It would also be neat to take it a step further - project the text directly onto your retina. I know there has been some experimenting with this idea before, but there was nothing small enough to fit on a cell phone or PDA.
Isn't that from Ghostbusters?
...from the fact that cell phones fail miserably at their one actual purpose; vocal communication. I'd like to see providers supply users with a product that fufills it's primary objective before gluing things like cameras, qwertys... or now... lasers... onto it. The slogan "Can you hear me now?" sums up the entire industry in a nutshell (though why a company would choose to spend millions associating themselves with phrase usually spoken in desparation while using the device they sell is beyond me). Give me a phone that works at least as well as any other utility, and maybe then we can talk about nifty attatchments.
This too, will end.
A friend of mine was showing me his camera phone last month, and I told him all it needs now is a projector to display the photos on a wall. I always think of these things first, then some company steals my ideas! :)
...because maybe someone at Konami reads /. :)
In answer to your question:
YES!
If you have to use a special pen... what's the point of having a keyboard? I mean, why doesn't it just do handwriting recognition? The whole point of having a keyboard is being able to type with all (or most of) your fingers. If you're limited to using the "special pen", it's slower than typing with your thumbs (assuming you have two of those).
Unless they can make the virtual keyboard work reliably with people's fingers, I doubt this will be very successful.
RMN
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When I read the headline the first time, I read "Cell Phone with Built-in Pocket Protector" and thought, "Wow, that's a pretty cool idea." Cell phones are actually what I do for a living, so I'm always eager to hear about new "features." This projector, however, doesn't really excite me. But, a built-in pocket protector -- now THAT would be cool.
I submitted info about this new technology well over a month ago.
....we'll be finding people's cell phones in crashed escape pods with messages on the project like, "Help me Obi Wan Konobi....you're my only hope."
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!