Considering Cheaper Pico-Projectors As Standard Equipment On Cell Phones

An anonymous reader writes "Will pico-projectors become standard equipment on mobile phones, the same way that digital cameras have become? The jury is still out on user acceptance — after all, only four mobile phones use pico-projectors today — but if they get small and cheap enough, mobile phone makers are going to install them. There are four vendors today — Microvision, National Semiconductor, 3M and Texas Instruments — but only TI has design wins in cell phones already on the market. And at the recent Mobile World Congress, TI showed a smaller digital light processor (DLP) chip that fits inside even the slimmest mobile phones, and which it claims is cheap enough to become standard equipment. A lot of us never use the camera in our phones now — would you use a pico-projector if it was built into your phone?"

Comments

I'll just take the projector

[JBMcB]

How about a wireless projecter, the size of a deck of cards, with built-in wireless USB and/or bluetooth? Then you can use it with nearly anything, the way wi-fi projectors work now.

Besides, if you're playing a video with your phone, what if you want to then take a phone call?

Re:I'll just take the projector

[Zerth]

How about a wireless projecter, the size of a deck of cards, with built-in wireless USB and/or bluetooth? Then you can use it with nearly anything, the way wi-fi projectors work now.

That's what I want. Pretty much any projector that can fit in a phone without bulking it up is probably too faint or too draining to use for any serious purpose. I want something that can last a few hours, but still be bright enough to use with the lights on, or only slightly dimmed.

Re:I'll just take the projector

[MBGMorden]

Besides, if you're playing a video with your phone, what if you want to then take a phone call?

Accept that you either don't use the technology or don't take calls while watching the video?

Personally I don't have a problem not having access to a phone for a while. People can leave a message. It wasn't 15 years ago that people, I shit you not, left their homes for HOURS AT A TIME without access to a phone. Having this as merely an option isn't going to hurt anyone.

And it can come in handy. Example: your friend was at a bachelor party that had a stripper. You and the rest of the people at your current party want to know how she looked. Would you rather huddle around his phone to see a picture, or him point it at the nearest wall and project a nice big image?

Or instead of that if you want to see a play from the latest game.

OR if you really do want to sit the thing down and play a movie.

Sure there are times when you wouldn't want to use it. It's certainly not going to replace dedicated projectors anymore than camera phones replaced dedicated cameras, but it can and will have uses.

Phone? No. Laptop? ABSOLUTELY.

[CDS]

No, I wouldn't use one in my phone - but I would ABSOLUTELY use one in my laptop.

It'd be great to be able to project onto a wall for a spur-of-the-moment code discussion, etc. It seems like every time I'm in a meeting & want to share an idea or code snippet, etc. with the group, it happens to be in an area without a projector. If we could have a picoprojector on the backside of my laptop's LCD, you could project from there whenever you need...

Depends on the output

[FrozenGeek]

I don't really care what device I use as a projector. What matters to me is whether the projection is bright enough for my audience to see the projected images clearly. If I can do that from my phone, great (one less piece of equipment to lug around).

The other question I would ask is whether using my phone as a projector would drain the battery, precluding me using the phone as a phone. A phone with a flat battery is not much use.

Re:Depends on the output

[be951]

Agreed. I think eventually, we will see phones/pocket-sized devices with a "pico" projector and one of these built in. And as storage gets smaller and chips get more powerful, we will end up with an all-in-one device that can replace laptops/netbooks as well. We already have convergence of phone, digital camera, video camera, PDA, MP3 player, GPS, etc... One of the things that makes the iPad attractive (YMMV) is the larger screen. A pico projector can provide that in a smaller device.

iPico

[Ukab the Great]

A projector wouldn't make Pico any more pleasant to use on a cellphone. Plus, you'd get all the DRM activists complaining that they hate Pico and that Apple won't let them projected emacs and vi on their iPhones.

Will pico-projectors become standard equipment?

[KharmaWidow]

It all depends on what Steve Jobs likes.

Just ask the teens...

[HikingStick]

And people thought sexting was bad with just those cell phone LCDs.

Your phone IS an ipod, IS a TV, IS a web browser

[Colin Smith]

It IS a videophone, is a word processor, is a spreadsheet, is also a map and a satnav, and is a super small computing device designed for visual display of information.

Fuck, I can even run multi user ssh sessions, DB servers and web sites on it. Y'know I reckon I could run mult user X desktops on the thing as well.

http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/

Where have you been for the last 5 years?

Projector too? Hell yeah!
 

Re:Your phone IS an ipod, IS a TV, IS a web browse

[Anonymous Coward]

My phone is an iPhone, you insensitive clod!

Re:a deck of cards

[Xiterion]

Perhaps because relative size comparisons, while less precise, are faster to recognize than decoding a set of dimensions.

Re:Phone? No. PDA? ABSOLUTELY.

[meustrus]

So, if we were to translate what you're saying out of the 90's, you want a pico projector in your iPhone/Droid/Nexus One/Palm Pre?

Bruce Forsyth's Play Your Cards Right!

[Dogtanian]

Why can't people use standard units of measurements like millimeters, or even inches?

Perhaps because regardless of minor variations- which I haven't really noticed- the vast majority of playing cards are close enough to the same size and any normal person would understand the approximate scale that the authors meant.

I mean, seriously, most people would know they didn't mean cards this size or require precise measurements unless they were some way along the autistic spectrum of literalness.