Motorola signs up for tiny projectors Motorola has teamed up with Microvision to put laser-projector technology into mobile phone handsets. The idea of putting a tiny projector into a mobile phone is nothing new - science fiction has been doing it for decades - but the practicalities of fitting an entire projector into the case of a phone and making it work from …
I don't understand everyone that wants this sort of 'feature' on a phone.
It is called a telephone for a reason - it sends sound over long distances.
I can see a mini projector in a Palm or a Laptop - that would be useful, but not in a damned phone. I can't imagine how looking at an image on a wall would aid me in calling people. I just don't see it.
I do think that lots of people need to remember what a phone is for, and forget about all the crap that the manufacturers tell us that we need to have.
I can think of a couple of reasons, maybe all not killer features but could be useful:
1) With portable movie playing devices becoming popular this could be a great feature to expand screen real estate without integrating a bigger screen. You could watch a movie on a train\plane\bus\etc by projecting it onto the seatback in front of you.
2) Viewing a movie on a phone with a group of people is awkward. You either pass the mobile on or everyone tries to crowd round.
3) Caller display for the terminally lazy. You stick your phone down on the coffee table and have a sit down in your sofa. The phone starts ringing but the effort of moving your backside to see who is calling is too great. Fortunately the projector kicks in and shows the associated caller display picture up on your wall. It's your boss calling so you stay seated. No calories wasted!
The first implementation of this may not be great. I seem to remember being unimpressed with camera phones when they first hit the streets and avoided getting one if possible. Now, however, camera phones have become quite capable megapixel devices that are handy for the occasional picture.
...And how about a miniature-torch with an inbuilt toaster? Miniature-Radio-Shoes? Miniature-USB-Hairdryer? They too have no practical purpose ;-) I think that after the success of the super slim and simple (New word: "Slimple"?) Motofone F3, Motorola embarked on a minituarisation trip ...
Who wanted texting? Who wanted a camera? Who wanted a videocamera? email? PDA? Games? Thermometer? GPS? Compass? Internet?.....etc.
Of course there's a market for it! You can imagine the rafts of porn being displayed on the walls of bars around the world...
You're obviously not gadget freaks. I'd buy a clamshell phone that doubled up as a toastie machine if they made bread small enough...
Today's pda phones have the big problem of being unusable as laptop replacements. However if you could get your phone to display a keyboard, and a touchable screen on your desk, using them would be much easier. Also mobile tv and video is only viable if you can watch the films on a bigger screen if you have the space. Adding an extra screen as a projected one is also very cheap.
ps: Lately, I've checked what is needed for a small screen rgb vga projector. It turns out that two servos (voice coils or piezo buzzers) and a single high brightness rgb led (and some tiny optics). The driver circuit is one microcontroller and at least one 8 channal mosfet driver ic and you could get vga resolution with 2.1 sound. And I'm talking about homemade stuff... In theory this could go down to the size of a matchbox. Add a camera and you have a projected touchscreen.
droids and execs would love something like this. They could pitch to a potential mark anywhere (elevator, in line at the deli, restroom, etc...) You'd never be able to escape cause everyone knows that no one can resist the power of a video.
It would be fun to beam a miniature version of yourself through the phone too (like using LiveMeeting or some such video conferencing tool) Like Leia's image coming from R2-D2.
And you could beam yourself through other peoples phone and terminate them in miniature.
Has no one seen _Star Wars: Episode IV_ where R2D2 projects out Princess Lea's plea? Reality always imitates art. The flip cellphone is the classic _Star Trek_ communicator. The 3.5" floppy disk is that data-storage "tape" that shows up in a couple episodes of classic _Star Trek_. Motion-detection opening doors in retail businesses comes straight out of _The Prisoner_ and _Star Trek_. 200cm flat panel television comes straight out of _Fahrenheit 451_. Indeed, there is an uncanny resemblance to the Internet with WWW in E.M.Forrester's The Machine (and its The Book of The Machine) in _The Machine Stops_, especially the anti-social physical isolation of closed online communities (present company excluded, of course). To some degree, carbon composites and some nano-structured large objects strongly resemble Rearden metal in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_. I am still waiting for Ayn Rand's holographic-projected sky-calendar and sky-clock in _Atlas Shrugged_. All of these fictional antecedents predated the earliest real prototypes of any of these by 1 to 6 decades.
Yes! You've hit upon the perfect next step! Forget phones with frickin' lay-zers or virtual keyboards or any of that stuff; make the damn things waterproof!
How many handsets get dropped in baths, or sinks, or 'borrowed' by toddlers and dunked in tea?
I'd buy that for a dollar...
(especially if it came with a decent camera...)
You have your bluetooth headset on, your projector phone fastened to your breast pocket. A call comes in and you hold a postcard sized piece of paper up to recieve the caller display. Your best mate? Press the button on your earpiece and start talking, obviously without the video feed. (That's just stupid.) Or you have a picture in your phone of a map, but the screen is too small, whip out a notepad and go to a blank page and project the picture there.
Every tool has its uses, you just need to use your imagination.
As for the built in toaster, seriously guys, a high power "lazor" can toast a full sized piece of bread, line by line, in seconds.
Exactly! It's the same with my damned desktop computer. It's designed to *compute* - i.e. perform arithmetic calculations. I'm sick of all these pointless gadgets being attached to it - internet connections, multimedia players, even games for crying out loud! What next? A toastie-maker adapter for my punched card reader?
When will manufacturers realise that if I wanted an electronic mail client, or a news feed or anything else, I would go and buy another box to handle it.
Now, where's my new car? I need to go and rip the radio out of it. Useless multi-purpose tools ... <rant fades into beard>
Convergence, it's the future, and you will have it weather you like it or not.
I for one look forward to the day when I can carry a device the size of (say) a phone that will fulfill ALL of my computational, communication and entertainment needs.
Although I'm not buying one until the first service pack of the second gen, onbviously :-)
BTW, no one mentioned business presentations. My current phone (now several years old) already has a TV out and can run Powerpoint presentations. A genuinely useful feature, although I have never used it. I hate powerpoint.
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