7 ms·

The phone with a projector

75 points by saket123 14y ago

sparknlaunch12 14y ago
Nice idea but heat and battery life will be an issue. There is a market for this but most will just hook up to their monitor or iPad. People serious about projection will must likely have a real one.
- mseebach 14y ago
  > People serious about projection will must likely have a real one. Sure, but that leaves out all those not serious about projection, and even for the rest, they don't have a projector that fits in their pockets. Compare with cameras: Before smartphones came with decent cameras, most people would just get out their good, regular camera. Less than ten years later, Instagram sells for ~$1bln.
- philipdlang 14y ago
  Exactly - what are the odds the battery doesn't actually last 3 hours? And how functional is it to project a movie on your phone, but then have a dead phone that you can't use the rest of the day.
  - sparknlaunch12 14y ago
    This technology feels ahead of its time. If battery life wasn't an issue on mobile devices this would be a massive product. Unfortunately battery life still sux. We would all love a projector on our phones, but we need battery power. Ever run a flash light app on your phone? Imagine watching an hour of video on a projector...
sambeau 14y ago
This sounds great at first but I'm unclear about how usable it would actually be. Any pressure on the device would cause the screen to jump about. I could see it being ok in start-then-put-down mode for Movies and Slideshows. But how often do we use phones like that? I look at photos in tiny batches normally with one other person, usually in a crowded place: pub, restaurant, car. I rarely watch movies on my iPhone but when I do it is usually on a train or in a car. The need for a static white wall and a conveniently tall table in an uncrowded space makes me question the utility of this at all.
- masklinn 14y ago
  The one place I'd see being used is mostly precluded by the "youthful" design (which I think looks like shit, by the way): impromptu meetings or small demos, replacing a dedicated pico-projector.
- camtarn 14y ago
  You could probably use it in more impromptu ways - e.g. by holding it above a sheet of A4 paper in a suitably dark pub, to allow an entire table to view a photo or video rather than having to pass a phone around. It wouldn't be stable at all, but being able to just beam a photo onto a random surface is pretty cool (although: cool enough to buy a phone solely for that feature? I'm not sure.)
  - 317 14y ago
    I think you could patch up a stabilisation algorithm pretty quickly for this purpose...
    - Schwolop 14y ago
      Not without a pan/tilt mirror or reducing the available resolution.
  - maebert 14y ago
    Using a gyroscope and accelerometer one could possible stabilize the picture up to some extent. But really, the fun starts when there'll be a mini-Kinect in your phone to interact with the projection...
  - gouranga 14y ago
    Considering the local pubs around me (Wetherspoons I'm pointing to you) appears to be full of drunken old perverts staring at porn on their iPhones, I'm not sure this is such a good idea...
- rplnt 14y ago
  > I look at photos in tiny batches normally with one other person, usually in a crowded place: pub, restaurant, car. Yes, that's because you don't have a choice. You can't do it any other way with a phone right now. > I rarely watch movies on my iPhone but when I do it is usually on a train or in a car. Same thing.
dmazin 14y ago
The gimmick-ness of this is just astounding.
pan69 14y ago
It sorta looks like Samsung is turning into the next Nokia. Putting out a lot of devices with gimmick features. I guess there must be a market for it.
- ukdm 14y ago
  There will be a huge market for this, especially among the younger generations and when combined with access to video services like YouTube. Projectors in phones will become a standard feature just like cameras imo. They just need to make the pico projector unit smaller.
  - tathagatadg 14y ago
    And multiplayer gaming? How can you not think of two dudes playing Tekken on a neighborhood alley with their characters projected on a wall - friends cheering all around! Of course the obvious camera input etc. has to work altogether. I've been dreaming this ever since I was kid. Definitely not a gimmick, and surely good new apps ...
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    I'm not convinced. When I think about kids or my childhood, it tends not to involve hanging out in places with a decent surface to project on and semi darkness to get a good image (or if they are in a place like that they've got access to a TV). Perhaps when the tech has improved (both sound and vision) this becomes the replacement for the TV in the kids room - just plug it into a charger and project it onto the wall streaming over the net - but it doesn't feel like a mobile thing for them. Remember, while this tech improves so do other displays. The expected standard will go up and the price of competing products will go down. When you can have a large screen, hi-def TV in every room that you can wirelessly and effortlessly connect a mobile device to, which comes without the issues associated with projection (shadows, light and so on), why would you want a projector?
- carguy1983 14y ago
  The difference is Samsung is a massive wholesaler of critical phone components to pretty much every other manufacturer, including Apple. Ever heard of a "reference implementation"? The linked page to me looks like a marketing sheet for a part, not a product.
sirclueless 14y ago
Well, it certainly looks sleeker than LG's attempt at this [1]. [1] http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/lg-expo-projector-hands-on/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/lg-expo-projector-hands-o...
samwillis 14y ago
Does anyone know which projector technology they are using in this? Edit: Should have googled first, its a TI DLP nHD projector apparently.
- unwind 14y ago
  Googled? What about reading the linked-to page? It's right there, after all. Even "above the fold", for some value of current screen resolution.
btn 14y ago
This is a new version of the Samsung i8520 [1], announced/released in 2009/10, but with a lower resolution camera and projector (although that says little about quality). [1]: http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i8520_beam-3150.php http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i8520_beam-3150.php
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
This is a real attempt to go after a market that has been trying to exist for a while. Back in the late 90's i laughed at Salesforce pitch people coming in dragging two carry-ons on wheels - one for the laptop one for the projector. Now they can slip them into pockets. Its a real market, and the next step is I put down my phone as a projector, you control the projector from your phone.
- teyc 14y ago
  It is also useful for casual meetings. As a side thought, while convergence is great - we no longer carry a separate music player, video player, phone and now mobile projectors, I've increasingly run into more people carrying spare batteries around.
  - saket123 14y ago
    Great point about battery. This one ships with 2000mAh. Which is enough for 3 hours of playtime. I wonder how useful such low battery life would be considering that you will rarely have 100% battery on your phone.
TeMPOraL 14y ago
Reminds me of Sixth Sense [1] as demoed on TED, but the projector is placed in a bad location for this kind of application. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixthSense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixthSense
iuguy 14y ago
It seems like Samsung are throwing phones out to see what sticks. While I think projectors could be useful, I'd be concerned about battery life and heat, not to mention what was cut out to fit this in. Hopefully they'll come to realise that the experience of using the phone is what wins, not how many widgets you can stick on one.
- gokhan 14y ago
  So the one in your pocket is just a phone to make calls and nothing else? No GPS? No sensors or something? Gyro? If so, I don't think it's a winner.
  - ctdonath 14y ago
    Yes. That's exactly what I want: a phone to make calls and nothing else. There is, in fact, such a market - and I'm surprised almost nobody has taken it seriously. I carry an iPad darn near everywhere I go. I don't want another device which demands yet another data plan. I don't need GPS, camera, projector, gyros, etc. in it. I want a phone which makes calls really well ... and I haven't found it. The phone I use now is a years-old POS candybar thing that the Verizon dealer found in a back room after I spent half an hour ranting about how I want "just a phone" that's thin and simple, one that's not an inch thick in my pocket and/or loaded down with lots of other "features" which just add weight, volume, and cost (methinks he was delighted to finally sell the thing to someone for $1). "Winner" doesn't have to mean "huge hit" or "includes kitchen sink". "Winner" can be something that a reliable niche is willing to pay a premium and serious markup for. I want a phone that takes great pains to make every nuance of the call perfect & pleasant. We're so used to what's wrong with making calls that we don't realize it's wrong. Make a phone that's small, thin, ergonomic, great sound, great voice control, great battery life, auto-syncs contacts, clean robust Bluetooth earpiece support (if not built into the earpiece entirely) etc. - done right, that will be a winner for a non-trivial market. Someone did make a laudable effort at it ("John's Phone"), but failed by putting space for storing a paper-and-pencil contact list, and by focusing on form over function. Someone, please, take the simple act of making a call seriously without any cameras & GPS & sensors & gyros etc. Yes, I want a phone in my pocket which is just a phone to make calls and nothing else. I've already got a tablet which does everything else.
polshaw 14y ago
This is actually really neat. Another step along the 'phone is the only device you need' road. It would be great for quickly sharing stuff like a youtube video. Kids could use it to watch a movie in their room, or at a friend's, or grandma's. Similarly, it could be great for the travelling. I can see some really great augmented reality uses for this, provided there is enough developer interest. Don't scoff at it because it doesn't match up to your 'real' projector-- it has some cool uses. The specs may not be so great yet (640x360 resolution, 15 Lumens), but it's very impressive that they got this into just 12.5mm thick phone, and specs (particularly resolution) will improve in future products.
- marcusf 14y ago
  This does carry the hallmarks of disruption (in the true Christensen sense of the word). If I were a projector company, I'd invest heavily in designing low power projection chips to sell to handset makers / make phone-sized projects to integrate with handsets. Maybe that already exists (beyond this phone)? I have to say I'm not well read on the state of the art here.
  - Schwolop 14y ago
    As a budding robot maker, I'd much rather they build a focus-less laser projector that's higher power and daylight visible. I don't give a rat's arse about handheld projection, but projectors on mobile robots are the future, and changing the focus of a regular beam projector on the fly by measuring the distance to the wall and then adjusting feels like a dodgy hack when I know there are laser devices in the market that just don't need to do this at all.
    - marcusf 14y ago
      Sounds cool. Are you working on anything in particular where you use a mobile projector today?
      - Schwolop 14y ago
        http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3800926 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3800926 I'm doing customer discovery/development at the moment before going too far into the actual prototyping. My current business model has changed a bit so the first product might end up being aimed at enterprises - essentially taking the top half of the robot platform described in that link and putting it in the middle of a conference table. The aim being to bring virtual conferencing, remote desktop assistance, and tele-presentations to the same level of efficacy as being there in person. So the product lets you do things like background subtraction behind the presenter, then stitching their image into the actual presentation or screen. Simultaneously the presenter gets to see the augmented image on a nearby wall by way of the projector part (like a portable green-screen). If both sides of the communication have the device then you can do cool stuff like rotating the projector to simulate having one party actually in the room with the other party. Add to that gestural and voice-controlled interfaces and I think its a step change improvement from existing systems.
Achshar 14y ago
What is with the 6 gb ram and 8 gb rom?
abend 14y ago
Neat idea, but the resolution is awful. What can you do with 640x360? This would be great if it could do 1080p or even 720p. Not 360p.
- imurray 14y ago
  What can you do with 640x360? — better than VHS quality. Sure I'd prefer HD, but that resolution was good enough to enjoy films in my childhood, so seems a feasible start for this technology now.
archivator 14y ago
Here's a hands-on from The Verge - http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/26/2825474/samsung-galaxy-beam-hands-on http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/26/2825474/samsung-galaxy-bea... . Contrast is pretty bad in an indoor-lit environment. I also can't tell if it's autofocusing or a laser projector. I can't imagine having an autofocus lens on a package this small but then again the contrast is worse than what I'd expect from laser projection.
- Schwolop 14y ago
  It's a laser projector. The beams are non-divergent so it's "focus-less".
- simcop2387 14y ago
  I imagine the contrast issue is one of raw power. stuff too large a set of laser diodes in there and you end up with it stealing all of the battery life easily.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- melling 14y ago
  The glass half empty or half full? It's funny to hear people complain because "Help me Obi-Wan" isn't quite ready for prime time. All these "cool" phones, tablets, etc are funding more R&D for the advances that will lead to the phone (or glasses) being the only device that you need. Now, if you could only get consumer robotics kicked started, we'll have our droids much sooner.
datagramm 14y ago
Those Samsung web people have some serious Photoshop skills! For a second there I thought that was a real photograph of a hockey puck flying out of a phone screen.
eli 14y ago
Back when Nokia was cool (maybe 2005) I saw them demo a phone that could project not just a display, but a working full size keyboard on a table.
splicer 14y ago
There are a few other micro projectors on the market: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/03/sanwa-iphone4-projector/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/03/sanwa-iphone4-projector/ http://www.microvision.com/showwxplus/ http://www.microvision.com/showwxplus/
sohamsankaran 14y ago
A local cellphone company called Micromax has been offering a projector phone in India since last year, and its been doing rather well. Anecdotally, people [in Mumbai] seem to be using it as a TV replacement, both due to the lower cost and higher portability (important because of the impermanence of the chawls and slums that house just under half of the city's population).
stefanix 14y ago
I was great this is awesome then I watched their promo video and have to say I feel I just ate way too much cake. I feel ill now. Wow this is bad. I am just not used to this kind of shit anymore after years of watching everything commercial-free on the internet.
gouranga 14y ago
Another way for teenagers to annoy the hell out of me on busses... (after the invention of the mobile phone speaker)
millzlane 14y ago
Another great addition to the android family. Samsung is a forward thinking company unlike the other guys. Sure many of us may not use it. But it's a TOOL and many of us will use it! My Android device has HDMI out, reads SD card and even picks up FM radio for Emergencies . Apple's iPhone is a deathtrap without the internet.
bwag 14y ago
Am I the only one that thinks their use case of leaving the phone in your child's room projecting a unicorn on the ceiling to help them sleep is just pure nonsense? http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxybeam/use_occasions07.html http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxybeam/use_occas...
- jahewson 14y ago
  It's great until you get a text message...!
revorad 14y ago
This could be the device for coding on the go.
Tim-Boss 14y ago
As someone who has forgone any TV's in place of a pretty heavy duty projector in my living room, I can say with some certainty that 15 lumens will barely be visible even in a pitch black room! My full-size/spec projector puts out about 2500 lumens and is still hard to see with the curtains open in the day time! I view this in the same way I view "fun-size" candy bars...an interesting novelty for kids, completely impractical for most everyone else!
- jim_h 14y ago
  My 25 lumen 800x600 res pico projector does just fine when I close my shades. Of course you can't expect that 2500 lumens much against the power of the sun..
Karunamon 14y ago
I like the idea but.. 3 hour battery? OUCH!
- aperrien 14y ago
  I'm assuming that's only while actively projecting...
tocomment 14y ago
Is there a chance a future iPhone would ever include this?
npsimons 14y ago
Here's what all the naysayers sound like to me: "A phone with a camera? That's just a useless gimmick, it will never take off. The resolution is horrible, there's no flash, no zoom and the picture quality is bad besides." Those who want "just a phone" may have a valid argument (side note - look into the Jitterbug, it might be just what they want), but the rest sound like the arguments of backwards-thinking people with no vision.
- JackC 14y ago
  I think maybe it's a difference between "this is a cool product" and "this is a cool tech demo." As a tech demo, it's a neat idea that's been tried before. It becomes news when someone manages to put together a shipping product that actually lets you do new and useful things with your phone. So is this that product? Well I can't help noticing that every single image on the Samsung site is a (bad) Photoshop. And looking at their ad video, I'm pretty sure that's special effects too -- compare it to the Verge video at about 00:25, and they look nothing alike. So if the manufacturer is showing solely fictional renderings of how they wish their product worked ... it's possible that a little naysaying is still in order. (That said, I totally agree that it's a great vision -- I'm just not sure Samsung has, you know, brought this particular vision into the light of day yet.)
instakill 14y ago
Projectors might be a bit gimmicky, but bundling certain functions into a phone's design can have drastic effects on a market. For instance, the most successful mobile phones in central Africa are those that have a torch and/or a radio, because that is what people in that area need. How many people will want a projector in a phone that will use it for serious business?

75 points by saket123 14y ago

Nice idea but heat and battery life will be an issue. There is a market for this but most will just hook up to their monitor or iPad. People serious about projection will must likely have a real one.

mseebach 14y ago
> People serious about projection will must likely have a real one. Sure, but that leaves out all those not serious about projection, and even for the rest, they don't have a projector that fits in their pockets. Compare with cameras: Before smartphones came with decent cameras, most people would just get out their good, regular camera. Less than ten years later, Instagram sells for ~$1bln.
philipdlang 14y ago
Exactly - what are the odds the battery doesn't actually last 3 hours? And how functional is it to project a movie on your phone, but then have a dead phone that you can't use the rest of the day.
- sparknlaunch12 14y ago
  This technology feels ahead of its time. If battery life wasn't an issue on mobile devices this would be a massive product. Unfortunately battery life still sux. We would all love a projector on our phones, but we need battery power. Ever run a flash light app on your phone? Imagine watching an hour of video on a projector...

sambeau 14y ago

This sounds great at first but I'm unclear about how usable it would actually be. Any pressure on the device would cause the screen to jump about. I could see it being ok in start-then-put-down mode for Movies and Slideshows. But how often do we use phones like that? I look at photos in tiny batches normally with one other person, usually in a crowded place: pub, restaurant, car. I rarely watch movies on my iPhone but when I do it is usually on a train or in a car. The need for a static white wall and a conveniently tall table in an uncrowded space makes me question the utility of this at all.

masklinn 14y ago
The one place I'd see being used is mostly precluded by the "youthful" design (which I think looks like shit, by the way): impromptu meetings or small demos, replacing a dedicated pico-projector.
camtarn 14y ago
You could probably use it in more impromptu ways - e.g. by holding it above a sheet of A4 paper in a suitably dark pub, to allow an entire table to view a photo or video rather than having to pass a phone around. It wouldn't be stable at all, but being able to just beam a photo onto a random surface is pretty cool (although: cool enough to buy a phone solely for that feature? I'm not sure.)
- 317 14y ago
  I think you could patch up a stabilisation algorithm pretty quickly for this purpose...
  - Schwolop 14y ago
    Not without a pan/tilt mirror or reducing the available resolution.
- maebert 14y ago
  Using a gyroscope and accelerometer one could possible stabilize the picture up to some extent. But really, the fun starts when there'll be a mini-Kinect in your phone to interact with the projection...
- gouranga 14y ago
  Considering the local pubs around me (Wetherspoons I'm pointing to you) appears to be full of drunken old perverts staring at porn on their iPhones, I'm not sure this is such a good idea...
rplnt 14y ago
> I look at photos in tiny batches normally with one other person, usually in a crowded place: pub, restaurant, car. Yes, that's because you don't have a choice. You can't do it any other way with a phone right now. > I rarely watch movies on my iPhone but when I do it is usually on a train or in a car. Same thing.

dmazin 14y ago

The gimmick-ness of this is just astounding.

pan69 14y ago

It sorta looks like Samsung is turning into the next Nokia. Putting out a lot of devices with gimmick features. I guess there must be a market for it.

ukdm 14y ago
There will be a huge market for this, especially among the younger generations and when combined with access to video services like YouTube. Projectors in phones will become a standard feature just like cameras imo. They just need to make the pico projector unit smaller.
- tathagatadg 14y ago
  And multiplayer gaming? How can you not think of two dudes playing Tekken on a neighborhood alley with their characters projected on a wall - friends cheering all around! Of course the obvious camera input etc. has to work altogether. I've been dreaming this ever since I was kid. Definitely not a gimmick, and surely good new apps ...
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  I'm not convinced. When I think about kids or my childhood, it tends not to involve hanging out in places with a decent surface to project on and semi darkness to get a good image (or if they are in a place like that they've got access to a TV). Perhaps when the tech has improved (both sound and vision) this becomes the replacement for the TV in the kids room - just plug it into a charger and project it onto the wall streaming over the net - but it doesn't feel like a mobile thing for them. Remember, while this tech improves so do other displays. The expected standard will go up and the price of competing products will go down. When you can have a large screen, hi-def TV in every room that you can wirelessly and effortlessly connect a mobile device to, which comes without the issues associated with projection (shadows, light and so on), why would you want a projector?
carguy1983 14y ago
The difference is Samsung is a massive wholesaler of critical phone components to pretty much every other manufacturer, including Apple. Ever heard of a "reference implementation"? The linked page to me looks like a marketing sheet for a part, not a product.

sirclueless 14y ago

Well, it certainly looks sleeker than LG's attempt at this [1]. [1] http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/lg-expo-projector-hands-on/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/lg-expo-projector-hands-o...

samwillis 14y ago

Does anyone know which projector technology they are using in this? Edit: Should have googled first, its a TI DLP nHD projector apparently.

unwind 14y ago
Googled? What about reading the linked-to page? It's right there, after all. Even "above the fold", for some value of current screen resolution.

btn 14y ago

This is a new version of the Samsung i8520 [1], announced/released in 2009/10, but with a lower resolution camera and projector (although that says little about quality). [1]: http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i8520_beam-3150.php http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i8520_beam-3150.php

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

This is a real attempt to go after a market that has been trying to exist for a while. Back in the late 90's i laughed at Salesforce pitch people coming in dragging two carry-ons on wheels - one for the laptop one for the projector. Now they can slip them into pockets. Its a real market, and the next step is I put down my phone as a projector, you control the projector from your phone.

teyc 14y ago
It is also useful for casual meetings. As a side thought, while convergence is great - we no longer carry a separate music player, video player, phone and now mobile projectors, I've increasingly run into more people carrying spare batteries around.
- saket123 14y ago
  Great point about battery. This one ships with 2000mAh. Which is enough for 3 hours of playtime. I wonder how useful such low battery life would be considering that you will rarely have 100% battery on your phone.

TeMPOraL 14y ago

Reminds me of Sixth Sense [1] as demoed on TED, but the projector is placed in a bad location for this kind of application. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixthSense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixthSense

iuguy 14y ago

It seems like Samsung are throwing phones out to see what sticks. While I think projectors could be useful, I'd be concerned about battery life and heat, not to mention what was cut out to fit this in. Hopefully they'll come to realise that the experience of using the phone is what wins, not how many widgets you can stick on one.

gokhan 14y ago
So the one in your pocket is just a phone to make calls and nothing else? No GPS? No sensors or something? Gyro? If so, I don't think it's a winner.
- ctdonath 14y ago
  Yes. That's exactly what I want: a phone to make calls and nothing else. There is, in fact, such a market - and I'm surprised almost nobody has taken it seriously. I carry an iPad darn near everywhere I go. I don't want another device which demands yet another data plan. I don't need GPS, camera, projector, gyros, etc. in it. I want a phone which makes calls really well ... and I haven't found it. The phone I use now is a years-old POS candybar thing that the Verizon dealer found in a back room after I spent half an hour ranting about how I want "just a phone" that's thin and simple, one that's not an inch thick in my pocket and/or loaded down with lots of other "features" which just add weight, volume, and cost (methinks he was delighted to finally sell the thing to someone for $1). "Winner" doesn't have to mean "huge hit" or "includes kitchen sink". "Winner" can be something that a reliable niche is willing to pay a premium and serious markup for. I want a phone that takes great pains to make every nuance of the call perfect & pleasant. We're so used to what's wrong with making calls that we don't realize it's wrong. Make a phone that's small, thin, ergonomic, great sound, great voice control, great battery life, auto-syncs contacts, clean robust Bluetooth earpiece support (if not built into the earpiece entirely) etc. - done right, that will be a winner for a non-trivial market. Someone did make a laudable effort at it ("John's Phone"), but failed by putting space for storing a paper-and-pencil contact list, and by focusing on form over function. Someone, please, take the simple act of making a call seriously without any cameras & GPS & sensors & gyros etc. Yes, I want a phone in my pocket which is just a phone to make calls and nothing else. I've already got a tablet which does everything else.

polshaw 14y ago

This is actually really neat. Another step along the 'phone is the only device you need' road. It would be great for quickly sharing stuff like a youtube video. Kids could use it to watch a movie in their room, or at a friend's, or grandma's. Similarly, it could be great for the travelling. I can see some really great augmented reality uses for this, provided there is enough developer interest. Don't scoff at it because it doesn't match up to your 'real' projector-- it has some cool uses. The specs may not be so great yet (640x360 resolution, 15 Lumens), but it's very impressive that they got this into just 12.5mm thick phone, and specs (particularly resolution) will improve in future products.

marcusf 14y ago
This does carry the hallmarks of disruption (in the true Christensen sense of the word). If I were a projector company, I'd invest heavily in designing low power projection chips to sell to handset makers / make phone-sized projects to integrate with handsets. Maybe that already exists (beyond this phone)? I have to say I'm not well read on the state of the art here.
- Schwolop 14y ago
  As a budding robot maker, I'd much rather they build a focus-less laser projector that's higher power and daylight visible. I don't give a rat's arse about handheld projection, but projectors on mobile robots are the future, and changing the focus of a regular beam projector on the fly by measuring the distance to the wall and then adjusting feels like a dodgy hack when I know there are laser devices in the market that just don't need to do this at all.
  - marcusf 14y ago
    Sounds cool. Are you working on anything in particular where you use a mobile projector today?
    - Schwolop 14y ago
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3800926 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3800926 I'm doing customer discovery/development at the moment before going too far into the actual prototyping. My current business model has changed a bit so the first product might end up being aimed at enterprises - essentially taking the top half of the robot platform described in that link and putting it in the middle of a conference table. The aim being to bring virtual conferencing, remote desktop assistance, and tele-presentations to the same level of efficacy as being there in person. So the product lets you do things like background subtraction behind the presenter, then stitching their image into the actual presentation or screen. Simultaneously the presenter gets to see the augmented image on a nearby wall by way of the projector part (like a portable green-screen). If both sides of the communication have the device then you can do cool stuff like rotating the projector to simulate having one party actually in the room with the other party. Add to that gestural and voice-controlled interfaces and I think its a step change improvement from existing systems.

Achshar 14y ago

What is with the 6 gb ram and 8 gb rom?

abend 14y ago

Neat idea, but the resolution is awful. What can you do with 640x360? This would be great if it could do 1080p or even 720p. Not 360p.

imurray 14y ago
What can you do with 640x360? — better than VHS quality. Sure I'd prefer HD, but that resolution was good enough to enjoy films in my childhood, so seems a feasible start for this technology now.

archivator 14y ago

Here's a hands-on from The Verge - http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/26/2825474/samsung-galaxy-beam-hands-on http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/26/2825474/samsung-galaxy-bea... . Contrast is pretty bad in an indoor-lit environment. I also can't tell if it's autofocusing or a laser projector. I can't imagine having an autofocus lens on a package this small but then again the contrast is worse than what I'd expect from laser projection.

Schwolop 14y ago
It's a laser projector. The beams are non-divergent so it's "focus-less".
simcop2387 14y ago
I imagine the contrast issue is one of raw power. stuff too large a set of laser diodes in there and you end up with it stealing all of the battery life easily.

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melling 14y ago
The glass half empty or half full? It's funny to hear people complain because "Help me Obi-Wan" isn't quite ready for prime time. All these "cool" phones, tablets, etc are funding more R&D for the advances that will lead to the phone (or glasses) being the only device that you need. Now, if you could only get consumer robotics kicked started, we'll have our droids much sooner.

datagramm 14y ago

Those Samsung web people have some serious Photoshop skills! For a second there I thought that was a real photograph of a hockey puck flying out of a phone screen.

eli 14y ago

Back when Nokia was cool (maybe 2005) I saw them demo a phone that could project not just a display, but a working full size keyboard on a table.

splicer 14y ago

There are a few other micro projectors on the market: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/03/sanwa-iphone4-projector/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/03/sanwa-iphone4-projector/ http://www.microvision.com/showwxplus/ http://www.microvision.com/showwxplus/

sohamsankaran 14y ago

A local cellphone company called Micromax has been offering a projector phone in India since last year, and its been doing rather well. Anecdotally, people [in Mumbai] seem to be using it as a TV replacement, both due to the lower cost and higher portability (important because of the impermanence of the chawls and slums that house just under half of the city's population).

stefanix 14y ago

I was great this is awesome then I watched their promo video and have to say I feel I just ate way too much cake. I feel ill now. Wow this is bad. I am just not used to this kind of shit anymore after years of watching everything commercial-free on the internet.

gouranga 14y ago

Another way for teenagers to annoy the hell out of me on busses... (after the invention of the mobile phone speaker)

millzlane 14y ago

Another great addition to the android family. Samsung is a forward thinking company unlike the other guys. Sure many of us may not use it. But it's a TOOL and many of us will use it! My Android device has HDMI out, reads SD card and even picks up FM radio for Emergencies . Apple's iPhone is a deathtrap without the internet.

bwag 14y ago

Am I the only one that thinks their use case of leaving the phone in your child's room projecting a unicorn on the ceiling to help them sleep is just pure nonsense? http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxybeam/use_occasions07.html http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxybeam/use_occas...

jahewson 14y ago
It's great until you get a text message...!

revorad 14y ago

This could be the device for coding on the go.

Tim-Boss 14y ago

As someone who has forgone any TV's in place of a pretty heavy duty projector in my living room, I can say with some certainty that 15 lumens will barely be visible even in a pitch black room! My full-size/spec projector puts out about 2500 lumens and is still hard to see with the curtains open in the day time! I view this in the same way I view "fun-size" candy bars...an interesting novelty for kids, completely impractical for most everyone else!

jim_h 14y ago
My 25 lumen 800x600 res pico projector does just fine when I close my shades. Of course you can't expect that 2500 lumens much against the power of the sun..

Karunamon 14y ago

I like the idea but.. 3 hour battery? OUCH!

aperrien 14y ago
I'm assuming that's only while actively projecting...

tocomment 14y ago

Is there a chance a future iPhone would ever include this?

npsimons 14y ago

Here's what all the naysayers sound like to me: "A phone with a camera? That's just a useless gimmick, it will never take off. The resolution is horrible, there's no flash, no zoom and the picture quality is bad besides." Those who want "just a phone" may have a valid argument (side note - look into the Jitterbug, it might be just what they want), but the rest sound like the arguments of backwards-thinking people with no vision.

JackC 14y ago
I think maybe it's a difference between "this is a cool product" and "this is a cool tech demo." As a tech demo, it's a neat idea that's been tried before. It becomes news when someone manages to put together a shipping product that actually lets you do new and useful things with your phone. So is this that product? Well I can't help noticing that every single image on the Samsung site is a (bad) Photoshop. And looking at their ad video, I'm pretty sure that's special effects too -- compare it to the Verge video at about 00:25, and they look nothing alike. So if the manufacturer is showing solely fictional renderings of how they wish their product worked ... it's possible that a little naysaying is still in order. (That said, I totally agree that it's a great vision -- I'm just not sure Samsung has, you know, brought this particular vision into the light of day yet.)

instakill 14y ago

Projectors might be a bit gimmicky, but bundling certain functions into a phone's design can have drastic effects on a market. For instance, the most successful mobile phones in central Africa are those that have a torch and/or a radio, because that is what people in that area need. How many people will want a projector in a phone that will use it for serious business?