Thursday, February 5, 2009

Project your cell phone


I bet everyone who reads this blog watches television a good amount. Anyone who watches TV notices the obscene amounts of advertisements in between what you actually want to watch. There is also a constant stream of cell phone commercials. They talk about the newest BlackBerry that also happens to have a touch screen which links you to everything you'll ever need on your phone and much much more. You can go online, take pictures, record videos, play games, keep your schedule, check and organize your e-mail, send voice messages watch TV, and they can even call people! But there is one thing all the phones in the American market lack, the ability to enlarge the screen for easier viewing of videos and pictures.

 

In this area of technology, America is far behind Asian countries that are able to use their cell phones as a credit card and convenience stores in addition to other cool things. Needless to say, we are far behind even though many of those features such as the feature that allows you to send an avatar when you call people seem entirely pointless. All the money handling capabilities of these phones seem a tad bit scary. Just having access to all your financial data available on such an easily misplaced item seems too risky. I’ve lost my phone a few times before and never was too worried about finding it since my phone contained nothing extremely personal or dangerous. But, one of the newest phone ideas out there could be coming to the states after a trip around Asia. Samsung has come out with a new phone called the Show and Logic also created the same type of phone called the Bolt. The unique thing about these phones is that they have a built-in projector. The projector is made by Texas Instruments utilizing their DLP technology that is now used in some movie theaters to enhance video. The screen can reach a beautiful picture at the good size of 50 inches; the size of a big screen TV!

 

I don't know about anyone else, but I think this is awesome. I always am taking crazy pictures and videos with my friends. When I go to show them to multiple people, problems arise. Elbows are being wedge between people to try to get a closer look before a fight breaks out over who should be the closest to the video only to be resolved by my agreeing to view the same media a multitude of times. So often have I wished I could just put it on a television for all to see. Alas, that would be another cord I wouldn't carry around with me anyway defeating the entire purpose of purchasing it in the first place. The convenience to create a larger screen on any flat surface appeals to me. It just makes sharing media quicker and easier which is how every piece of technology evolves. The biggest problem I see is cost. Few people are going to want to hand out the few extra hundred just to get a projector in their phone. It may be a good investment for business people who are constantly giving presentations, but not a good one for the common person. Plus, DLP technology is fairly fragile. I’d be worried that if I simply had the phone slip out of my pocket and onto a hard floor, the projector would be broken. Don’t forget that the projector would eat up all your battery life just to turn on. It better come with extra batteries for those giving presentations with their phone; they don’t want to have to stop a presentation early and just go by memory only because the battery died.

 

All in all, a projector phone could be a great idea if they manage to cut the cost to produce it while keeping reliability intact. I don’t see how it could become mainstream, at least in America, anytime soon. We may have to wait years before this becomes available and affordable to the American public. The people willing to use their phone to manage finance will love this addition to the countless things their phone is already capable of doing.

2 comments:

  1. Wow! This is a great idea. There have been so many times where I have wished I could get pictures and video larger on my screen or I have been trying to show friends something and the image is so small that my phone needs to be passed around the whole room. This would solve all of those problems. However, I would be worried about damaging the projector because I have been known to drop my phone once or twice (a day). Do you know when these cool phones might start to be released to the public?

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  2. It's goning to be release in South Korea first. If it manages to sell well there, we will be able to see it in the states in a few year.

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