Samsung Develops World's First three-inch VGA LCD

Nomad05 writes "Samsung announced this week it has developed the world's first three-inch VGA LCD panel that "directly meets industry interface standards for digital still cameras." What this means is that future LCD screens on digital cameras will allow multimedia to be viewed at a resolution of 640x480. Presently, a majority of camera LCDs only display multimedia at a resolution of 320x240 — significantly lower in quality than Samsung's new LCD. In layman's terms, expect significantly brighter, more detailed LCD displays, which will enable you to review your photography more thoroughly after you take an exposure. This innovation will make it easier to spot blurry images and ensure your photo is framed properly. "

Comments

Damn kids and their VGA's...

[halivar]

In my day, we had 320x200, and 16 colors. By God, we were thankful for it!

Re:Damn kids and their VGA's...

[kfg]

In my day, we had 320x200, and 16 colors.

What's color?

KFG

Re:Damn kids and their VGA's...

[Russ Steffen]

And 320x200? My teletype only had 132 columns.

Hold on, I gotta go chase some of those damn kids off my lawn...

Re:Damn kids and their VGA's...

[Bacon Bits]

In my day we had 80 columns by 25 rows and a choice between two colors: green and amber.

20 bucks

[Linkiroth]

Says that this ends up in a rock on someone's dashboard on that MTV show "pimp my ride".

Re:20 bucks

[Kankraka]

Actually, this is a perfect display for what I had planned for just that. An in car media center powered by a mac mini :). I was saddened by the fact I would have to butcher some crappy "portable dvd player" and use a DVI to S-video adapter to do it half assed, and subsequently gave up on it. I may just be able to do it after all :D. It's so perfect, remote included, iTunes visuals for the eyecandy, mobile web and what not through wifi! Add more songs/videos from your driveway! And it all stashes under the passenger seat :)

Batteries ?

[Sb1]

Don't get me wrong, this is a step in the right direction.

But now your batteries will last really long now!!

Re:Batteries ?

[adrianmonk]

But now your batteries will last really long now!!

I'm sure it won't have a positive effect, but it may not have as much of a negative effect as you'd think. Back when I was doing Palm OS programming, I kept track of the trends in Palm hardware, and most of their machines are battery-powered devices using 320x480 displays (so half this resolution). Hardware review sites would do various battery life tests on new units, including various combinations of display off and on, CPU running and idle (and therefore halted and using very little power), backlight off and on, etc. And what I remember noticing is that the LCD really doesn't take up nearly as much power as you'd think. It's mostly the other parts of the device that use up the real power.

Also, I'm not really sure that a higher-res display will use much more power at all. Most of the power used is from the backlight, if I recall correctly, and that is going to be proportional mainly to the total area -- it shouldn't matter much how many pixels there are in that are. As for brightness increases, if this means a brighter backlight, then it might use more power (assuming all other things are equal), but with an LCD, there are two ways to increase brightness: one is to brighten up the backlight, and the other is to reduce the amount of light that the LCD blocks. The latter means you can get a brighter screen with the same backlight. If they do that, then it wouldn't necessarily increase power usage at all.

Shame displays are not like other tech products

[QuantumG]

If you go to Intel and ask for one unit of their latest embedded processor, they'll sell you a technology demonstrator kit. It's cost more per unit than if you were buying 200,000 units, but you can actually get one. The same pretty much goes for RAM chips or USB chips or whatever. Not for displays though. For some reason you can only buy displays by the thousands, unless you buy one from someone who has already bought them by the thousands. Most of the time it is cheaper to buy some consumer electronics device which has the component you're interested in it and pull it apart.

Re:Shame displays are not like other tech products

[Millenniumman]

bool verification = [[aboveComment Find:@"entire LCD display industry" andReplace:@"Microsoft XBox division"] verify];
NSLog("&@", verification);

Log:

true

Re:Shame displays are not like other tech products

[mr_zorg]

The entire LCD display industry currently operates at a per unit loss, so they have to make it up in volume.

Your statement makes absolutely no sense. The only thing selling at a per unit loss in high volumes will get you is high losses. $0 x 1,000,000 units is still $0. Worse yet, -$10 x 1,000,000 units is -$10,000,000. You tend not to stay in business with that kind of model.

Re:Shame displays are not like other tech products

[kfg]

Your statement makes absolutely no sense. The only thing selling at a per unit loss in high volumes will get you is high losses.

Exactly. That's the point of the orginal joke; and what, I hope, made my joke on the joke funny. Because it's true.

Other poster has it pretty much right with his joke about the Xbox, we're talking pretty much the same sales model. The display makers are locked in a tech/market dominance war and have been bleeding cash for years, each hoping to make it up by being the last man standing. They can "afford" to do this because they have other, profitable, lines covering the losses. We're not talking garage businesses here. We're talking Samsung and the like.

This doesn't exactly suck for the consumer, but it does mean that the makers simply aren't in a position to deal with single unit sales of cutting edge stuff to experimenter/prototypers. They've got to move mass quantities for cash flow and to be the first to lock up corporate contracts, even though this means high losses. If they don't get whatever they're going to get in a hurry they're really fucked because of their high capital outlay.

So we've got to wait for it to hit Best Buy in some consumer gewgaw or other which we can gut for the bits, which costs us far less than the display maker could reasonably sell just the display for.

Are we having fun yet?

KFG

Re:Shame displays are not like other tech products

[kfg]

The great thing about the Internet is the way it allows people of all nations, all ages and all backgrounds to miscommunicate with each other.

I don't know who, where or how old you are. If you don't know the joke I used, which is quite possible; and that it is a joke, it would necessarily go over your head. It might have helped to have read a bit of Dave Barry to understand the cultural meaning of the phrase "I'm not making this up," which implies that "I'm not making this up," but. . . there is a joke in here somewhere.

And my own sense of humor is, shall we say. . ."peculiar."

KFG

Re:Shame displays are not like other tech products

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Your statement makes absolutely no sense. The only thing selling at a per unit loss in high volumes will get you is high losses.

That would be false.

You make the false assumption that cost per unit is constant regardless of volume. That is rarely the case in real life, and especially not so in the case of high-tech manufacturing.

There are a bunch of very large fixed costs - the highlights include R&D and the construction of the manufacturing plant. If the marginal manufacturing cost is less than the selling price, then the higher your volumes, the more units there are to amortize those fixed costs. Thus larger volumes mean smaller losses.

Presuming your marginal cost is relatively constant, then at some point larger volumes will mean a cross from red to black, or in other words profitability. But even if that point is unattainable (say for instance it is larger than the total market) you still lose less money by selling higher volumes.

I realize this site is not MBAdot, but this stuff is basic econ101 and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who went to college, or even the honors track in high school.

Re:Shame displays are not like other tech products

[GTMoogle]

What you're arguing is that each unit makes slightly more money than materials, so you have to sell a lot to make up the cost of infrastucture. Duh, no shit, basic econ.

I don't know what KFG was talking about, but 'per unit loss' sounds like "Each unit sells for less than cost of materials". Which would mean you're losing money per unit ON TOP of infrastucture. What I'm guessing is going on here (assuming kfg's not talking out of his ass, and I'm not being dumb), is that they have, for example, some deal with companies like dell where they're being paid a lump sum for a contract to provide units at a certain cost, or some wierd such backroom nonsense that is certainly not basic econ 101.

It'd be nice if the original poster would clarify, but I think you're making too many assumptions.

Regardless, you probably can't buy single units because the manufactures make to order, rather than pay for warehousing costs for units waiting to sell.

In Layman's Terms...

[glancep]

Samsung's new LCD. In layman's terms, expect significantly brighter, more detailed LCD displays, which will enable you to review your photography more thoroughly after you take an exposure. This innovation will make it easier to spot blurry images and ensure your photo is framed properly.

So, when we are explaining new tech to people who do not know better, we can just make stuff up, right? Okay, maybe I could buy that you can verify framing easire in some circumstances, but how does resolution have anything to do with brightness?

2.4 Inch VGA LCD Premiered Months Ago

[KingDork2K3]

3.2 Megapixel Phone Camera in Japan with VGA LCD

http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/model_3G/v 904sh/index.html

"In layman's terms"?

[epp_b]

What do we need that for on Slashdot?

Nearly an inch smaller VGA screen makes news?

[tlhIngan]

Sharp and Toshiba both make PDA-sized VGA screens. Maybe NEC, too. I think the Toshiba is a 640x480 screen, while the Sharp is a 480x640 screen.

Look up the Toshiba e805 PDA. Or the Dell Axim x51v (which can be had cheaply). Both feature a 3.8" VGA screen.

So all that's been accomplished is the screen is an inch smaller.

I've had QVGA screens that were 1.6" in size, so they had the same DPI as this screen...

Re:Nearly an inch smaller VGA screen makes news?

[joetheappleguy]

I think the Toshiba is a 640x480 screen, while the Sharp is a 480x640 screen.

Maybe you're holding it upside-down?

Re:Nearly an inch smaller VGA screen makes news?

[mh101]

I wondered what the big deal was at first,but then I realized that the big thing here would probably be the DPI. 640x480 on a 3" screen would require a higher DPI than a 4" screen. I haven't RTFA, but I'm assuming the deal is that they couldn't get that DPI before.

This is for VIDEO cameras

[aibrahim]

TFA says digital cameras, and then talks about 30Hz. Display syncing is not an issue for still applications- only for video.

What this really means is that you will be able to get crystal clear standard definition screens on your camcorder.

Of course its a bit late. A lot of the cameras now coming onto the market are shooting HDV and soon AVC HD- many in progressive formats and without the frame sync issues of SD video. So... they can include the older 60Hz LCD's and use frame doubling in the framebuffer. They can also use higher resolution small LCD's.

Still this is a great technology, and being able to do this should help Samsung's institutional knowledge about LCD's in general. I hope to see some of these devices used in LCD field production monitors of varying sizes.

SD ain't dead yet.

Say what?

[eebra82]

This innovation will make it easier to spot blurry images and ensure your photo is framed properly.

Say what? The images that are rendered onto the tiny screen of a camera are sized down with aliasing algorithms. Although the resizing will happen at 640x480 instead, this will have little impact since we do no longer take memorable pictures at this resolution. Memory is so cheap now and I'm sure we can get four gigs under a hundred bucks soon, too. So, either way, the picture is always going to be scaled down and viewed in proper resolution once you've zoomed in a few times.

Also, the higher resolution won't do anything at all for those of you who want to spot blurred pictures with more ease. Even if it's definitely a higher DPI, you end up watching at 3 inches which is very small, so blurred objects that appear not so sharp will appear sharp on this tiny display, simply because the blurred area will appear so small on a small screen, it won't even be noticable. Once again, zooming in is the only solution.

Either way, I'm sure someone will come up with an algorithm that detects blurred images automatically. It may not be 100 percent proof, but that's still a lot better.

I'm obviously trolling here, however. More DPI is always nice and I bet we can go to 1000 DPI before we stop bothering that much about it, but the arguments used in this article made no sense to me.

Gee...

[humungusfungus]

Wow. Jeepers. Glad that stuff was explained in layman's terms. Otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue.

Is this slashdot or CNN?

Re:Stay close

[XHIIHIIHX]

it's 10 (+.2) cm (4.0"), you rounded down twice. The image will be better between 4" and 8", 1/2 vga = .190 mm using your numbers. That's about the distance where you look at a camera picture.

On the "layman's terms" thing...

[Nomad05]

I apologize for that -- I should have revised my submission and cut out all the fluff. The site it was written for is geared toward intermediate-advanced users of Digital SLR cameras and those with a general interest in photography. I certainly did not mean to discredit the intelligence of Sladhsot's tech-savvy audience.

I would have included more specs and details on the brightness of the LCD and pixel count had I been more considerate. Again, my bad.

Nomad05

Not to nitpick,

[vogon jeltz]

but "LCD displays"? Like "Liquid Crystal Display displays"?
I mean come on, this is supposed to be a site for techno nerds.

Re:This is Great

[Aphrika]

Even more stunning is the screen on the Sony UX180. That's running a 4.5" diagonal display (about 4" x 2.25") at a resolution of 1024 x 600, which is absolutely phenomenal.

Add to that it's Xbrite and touchscreen capabilities and I reckon it's pretty much about as good as you can get at the moment - sort of coming in at around 260 dpi. When you run Cleartype on it in Windows, the anti-aliasing is virtually invisible, it just looks like paper.

Regarding the power consumption - AFAIK, the UX180 screen is LED backlight driven which saves a large amount of juice and gives a more even effect, hence the UX180's decent battery life when compared to the larger screen (and lower res) UMPCs - one of which is ironically made by Samsung.

Samsung... knows Apple, right?

[catmistake]

Am I the only one wondering if the next iPod will have a VGA display?

Re:Resolution

[jcr]

What are yojuu talking about apple for?

Perhapsyou missed the news about Apple investing a couple hundred million dollars in a joint venture with Samsung to build an LCD factory and R&D facility? Apple's 30" displays come from that factory, and chances are that the first 200 DPI + displays for the Mac aren't too far off.

-jcr