The phone with a projector | Hacker News Reader

The phone with a projector

samsung.com

75 pointssaket12371 comments

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.

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.

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.

Sounds cool. Are you working on anything in particular where you use a mobile projector today?

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.

The mobile porn industry will like this too.

What I find quite interesting is this _disruptive_ design first appeared (to my knowledge at least) in Shenzen knockoffs at least 4 years ago[1]. Maybe there is prior art from Samsung but it seems like more evidence of the rise of hardware innovation in China and Shenzen.

[1] - http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/13/worlds-first-projector-ce...

To me it's a step backwards. The non-apple smartphone makers - I'm looking at you Samsung, Moto - are reusing their same old feature phone strategy, but applying it to smartphones by making gimmicky one-trick ponies. The "projector phone." The "notepad phone." The "maxxx battery phone." The "swipe typing phone." The "social networks phone." We've been down that road before with feature phones.

Experience with the iPhone might tell you though that consumers are looking for something different this time around. (not an apple fanboy here, btw)

Pico projectors are cool technology, and ought to be used more, but this phone is not a killer app.

I don't think this is a one trick phone. Its a full fledged smartphone with everything what an iPhone can do plus this cool projector. Infact this is a very good innovation in field of hardware as manufacturers using Windows or Android are increasingly relying on hardware to differentiate.

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.

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.

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.)

I think you could patch up a stabilisation algorithm pretty quickly for this purpose...

Not without a pan/tilt mirror or reducing the available resolution.

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...

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...

> 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.

No, that's because it is normal behaviour to be chatting with one person and say "I must show you a picture of it".

Ditto Movies. Will I really start showing movies in a pub because I can? Would I choose my phone over my HD TV or iPad when at home?

Also, how many headphone sockets does this device have?

Pair it with a camera, to close the feedback loop:

* The phone can track the environment and transform the picture to keep it stable.

* Augmented reality applications (a la http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/)

Or invisibility!

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.

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.

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.

Here's a hands-on from The Verge - 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.

It's a laser projector. The beams are non-divergent so it's "focus-less".

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.

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).

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

There are a few other micro projectors on the market:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/03/sanwa-iphone4-projector/

http://www.microvision.com/showwxplus/

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!

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..

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.

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.

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 ...

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?

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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?

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

I'm assuming that's only while actively projecting...

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.

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.

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.

I'd agree with this if it wasn't for wanting my contacts synchronised. That's enough of a reason to have a data plan on the phone for me.

(I guess if someone did bite off this market, they could find a way around that.)

You mean like a USB charger that syncs with your PC.

Yes, but I think you'll agree that getting them over the air is better. However, this would be adequate, just not as good.

This. I use a Blackberry for work, but still miss my old Nokia 6310... good call quality, great battery life, and no distractions. A phone-that's-just-a-phone. And, being seriously uncool, it has less appeal to thieves :-)

What use is a phone that has a million widgets if you have to go through 6 screens to make a phone call? I had this with Windows Mobile and a HTC Universal. The thing that iOS does really really well is provide an experience that doesn't feel like it's getting in the way. Android does that as well for basic functions, but in bolting on all of these functions to turn the phone into a swiss army knife, they're fragmenting the android experience.

As someone pointed out there is a market for simpler phones. I'm sure there's a market for more complex ones too.

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_occas...

It's great until you get a text message...!

Another way for teenagers to annoy the hell out of me on busses...

(after the invention of the mobile phone speaker)

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

Well, it certainly looks sleeker than LG's attempt at this [1].

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/lg-expo-projector-hands-o...

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.

> 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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Does anyone know which projector technology they are using in this?

Edit: Should have googled first, its a TI DLP nHD projector apparently.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

This could be the device for coding on the go.

The gimmick-ness of this is just astounding.

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