Considering Cheaper Pico-Projectors As Standard Equipment On Cell Phones 146
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?"
I'll just take the projector (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Phone? No. Laptop? ABSOLUTELY. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
iPico (Score:1, Insightful)
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? (Score:1, Insightful)
It all depends on what Steve Jobs likes.
Re:I'll just take the projector (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Just ask the teens... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your phone IS an ipod, IS a TV, IS a web browser (Score:5, Insightful)
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/ [nokia.com]
Where have you been for the last 5 years?
Projector too? Hell yeah!
Re:I'll just take the projector (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Depends on the output (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your phone IS an ipod, IS a TV, IS a web browse (Score:1, Insightful)
My phone is an iPhone, you insensitive clod!
Re:a deck of cards (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Phone? No. PDA? ABSOLUTELY. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bruce Forsyth's Play Your Cards Right! (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [guardian.co.uk] or require precise measurements unless they were some way along the autistic spectrum of literalness.