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Mobile Phone Projectors "Will Launch This Year"

Posted by kdawson on from the is-that-a-laser-in-your-pocket dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Mobile phones with built-in mini projectors will launch later this year, according to 3M, which gave PC Pro a hands-on demonstration of the technology at CES 2008. The projector has a brightness of around 8-10 lumens, and is capable of displaying an image of up to 50 in., although 3M's spokesperson Greg Roberts told us that, with perfect lighting conditions, it's possible to squeeze a 60-in. screen out of the projector."

9 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. 8- 10 lumins? by timmarhy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    WTF? 50inch screen with only 10 lumin is going to be SHITTY.

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    1. Re:8- 10 lumins? by dotancohen · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's how they will get you to buy the 25 lumins model next year, when the technology will ripen. Why should they lose out on the money they could make selling immature technology?

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    2. Re:8- 10 lumins? by famebait · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why you would need to project photographs from a cell phone,

      Umm, have you ever tried _looking_ at photos on a typical cell phone screen?
      How about showing on to a group of people?
      No matter what resolution we might get, they remain _small_.

      If you can get fair quality and resolution on a monitor-sized surface,
      its a whole different world. I think it would be a hit for exactly
      the same reasons that camera phones have been.

      Hell, even pure digital cameras would would about double their usefulness
      with something like this.

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  2. I thought it was a dupe... by RuBLed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... but this is not the same as this one http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/03/0418221. This one is led based and seems to be smaller but the PicoP one is laser based and images seems to be better. That is the one I want on a mobile phone. OTOH I don't want these on my mobile phone...

  3. Missing the point.... by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is about selling phones, not about producing quality images (that might come in five years or so).

    Remember polyphonic ringtones? Were they "quality" music? Nope, but we all secretly wanted them.

    The gadget power of having a phone-projector is orders of magnitude more than a polyphonic ringtone. This thing will sell millions no matter how bad the image quality is.

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    1. Re:Missing the point.... by stewbacca · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Remember polyphonic ringtones? Were they "quality" music? Nope, but we all secretly wanted them.
      Some of us to this day could care less about ringtones and have never wanted them; not even "secretly". This is just another example of feature-glut that is not wanted. I can't wait for my toaster to play mp3s or my vacuum cleaner to take incoming calls, for that matter.
  4. Re:a basic tutorial by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The inverse square law only applies to an isotropic source - a light that's being emitted in every direction (like a candle). This is why lasers stay bright at a distance.

    All that matters here is light output divided by the square inches of the screen. Assuming that this screen has a 4:3 aspect ratio and produces a 50" diagonal image, that means it produces 1200 sq in of image. This gives 10 lumens / 1200 sq in = .008 lumen / sq in.

    I have no idea though if that's a lot or a little.

  5. Disruptive technology by Kupfernigk · · Score: 4, Insightful
    All the bleating about scope creep and so on completely misses the point. This is a potentially disruptive technology because it has the long term power to get rid of the _monitor_. Monitors are horrible, they are big and clunky. They determine the form factor of laptops and notebooks. Really and truly, we don't want them.

    Now imagine in a few years where your display surface might just be a cheap light screen with a simple support to hold it at different angles. The computer can be almost any shape that suits, perhaps with a fold out keyboard. You can have a big screen on your desk, a small clip on screen that you use on the train. Perhaps the computer has a wireless dongle that includes the display driver, perhaps it's built in, perhaps both.

    Using a curved screen might involve no more than an adjustable object in the optical path to deal with the pincushion distortion - use of lasers means focus at virtually any distance.

    Microsoft has built up a huge business based solely on the mouse, monitor,keyboard model. Apple has started to move away from it. This is a little gadget which could reshape the desktop computer industry. It shouldn't be underestimated.

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  6. Re:phones? bah! by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Now *thats* a product I would get excited by.

    I take it that not much excites you, as in you're impossible to please. It looks like you want to have it both ways, as if you'd want a unicorn but are not willing to actually pay for it.

    There are LED projectors available and coming out, but it hasn't really come of age yet, they aren't that bright yet.

    I think there are several great projectors available. I wouldn't be too turned off by bulb life, my first projector lasted about five years on a 2000 hour bulb. If you watch an average of two hours a night, a 5000 hour bulb would last nearly seven years. Projector noise doesn't have to be a problem, there are quite a few quiet projectors.