CellphoneProjector
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Samsung's pico projecting W9600 gets a brief hands-on
Samsung made a fairly tame showing at CES but we did bump into a rather sweet bit of integrated projection fun. The W9600 replaces last year's W7900, and, like its predecessor, the specs are pretty thin. We do know, however, that it uses Texas Instruments' WVGA chip for the projection, has a 5 megapixel cam, a completely beautiful touchscreen AMOLED display, and can project vids, pics, and even the phone's interface. We've always felt that projection phones are pretty toys but ultimately, we didn't see a really solid reason they existed when we first saw them, and we still don't with the W9600. That being said, this phone doesn't feel so much like a work in progress, the focus wheel, finish, branding and the rest make this feel a bit more like a real phone and less like a dummy phone. Of course, the whole point is moot as the Anycall-branded W9600 will likely never make its way to our pockets, let alone our carriers. But do feel free to wander the gallery and take in the sights. %Gallery-81854%
Mini projectors spark worries about "visual pollution"
Texas Instruments and others have been touting mini (or pico) projectors without hesitation as of late, but it seems that not everyone is quite so excited about them, with some folks now even warning about a number of potential dangers. One of those naysayers is Future Laboratory founder Martin Raymond, who told the BBC that while the projectors (likely to be used primarily in cellphones) are "appealing initially," he has concerns about the devices causing "visual pollution," adding that there could be "inappropriate showing of things that maybe other people shouldn't be seeing." Needless to say, he also foresees new laws and legislation controlling the use of the technology. No matter how things shake out, however, the one thing that seems clear is that the humble laser pointer will soon be about as antiquated as the spitball when it comes to juvenile means of public embarrassment.[Via About Projectors]
Hands-on with Texas Instruments' cellphone projector
Now that we have email, internet, TV, GPS, cameras, and satellite radio on our cellphones, our next wish is for bigger, higher resolution screens -- which seems paradoxical, because larger displays almost always mean bulkier devices. Well Texas Instruments thinks it'll soon be able to nullify this trade-off with an in-handset projector that we've heard about several times before, but last night's Pepcom event in New York was the first time we've been able to peep the technology up close. Not that the TI reps made it easy to do so: the prototype unit was in a locked metal case underneath the table, and we had to swear up and down that we saw Walt Mossberg getting a demo before they'd cough it up. As you can see, the reason they want to keep this under wraps for the time being is that the quality and brightness are certainly not ready for prime time yet; while the unit we saw used lasers as the light source, we're told that an LED-based model still in the lab offers significant improvements. Keep reading for more shots of this rare prototype -- along with a video courtesy of Popular Science -- and give yourself a few moments to bask in the future before returning to the stark reality of your own phone and its dim little QQVGA action...
Cornell researchers building video projector on a chip
We've seen plenty of tiny projector concepts over the past couple of years, but some researchers at Cornell University are taking this idea to its logical extreme by building a whole display on a single chip. The crux of their idea is basing the device on carbon-fiber, since silicon proves too brittle to handle the 60,000 times a second line-scanning frequency of a traditional video display. Carbon-fiber, on the other hand, can withstand all sorts of abuse and keep on scanning. The chip design has an tiny 400 x 500 micron mirror supported by two carbon-fiber hinges, an array of which -- one for each horizontal line -- would be all that's needed to scan lasers across a screen for a full-fledged video display. Supposedly all this can be squeezed into a form factor small enough to power a cellphone-based projector, and the carbon-fiber springs might even work as a way to harvest energy from user movement for powering small electronic devices. Sign us up for both, please.[Via Slashdot]
