Projector phone

Praytech Communication Technology (a Shenzhen, China based mobile phone maker) introduced two new DLP devices, a projector phone and a pico projector. We don't have any information about the phone, but it is reported that it will replace Praytech's older model which uses an LCoS light engine, and will be marketed to mobile network providers in India and China.

The pico projector uses an optical engine by iView which features 640x480 resolution and 12 lumens. It will be marketed by China Telecom, bundled with smartphones.

Asia Optical says that they plan to ship 2 million LCoS pico projector modules in 2012 - half of them embedded in smart phones and half in external pico projectors. Apparently most of these projector phones (if not all) will be launched by China-based vendors, probably to the Chinese market.

Asia Optical managed to decrease the production cost of an LCoS module to below $20.

Pacific Media Associates (PMA) released their finding from their sixth biennial US projector users, and it includes some interesting results. 90% of organization respondents and 78% of individual customers were either very interested or somewhat interested in buying a pico-projector. This is a dramatic increase from 2009 (44% and 53% for organizational and individual customers).

Another interesting finding is that most people (in both the professional and individual segments) actually want an embedded pico projector in their laptop and not in their phone. Mobile phones are just the fourth most popular embedded option.

A few weeks ago we reported about the Century Monolith - a new iPhone 4 case, battery and projector. This cool device is now shipping for $229.99 (under the Brookstone brand). The DLP projector features 640x360 resolution and 15 lumens, and the 1900mAh battery lasts for about 3 hours.

LG's eXpo projector phone is a bit of old news (it was announced in November 2009), but if you still haven't bought your pico-projector accessory for your eXpo phone, you'de be happy to hear that LG are now selling it for just $29.99! The DLP projector offers 480x320 resolution.

The LG eXpo itself is a QWERTY slider running Windows Mobile 6.5 on a 1Ghz CPU, and it's got a 3.2" touchscreen, 5mp camera and a microSD slot.

Researchers from the University of Bristol in the UK suggest using 'dynamic spatial coupling' for mobile projector phones. They say that it's usually not comfortable to project in a straight line from the phone - as you still need to use the phone's own touch display. The idea is to use a mirror that is used to project in different angles as needed, while the phone is still held straight. This is actually a good idea:

Now we just need companies to start offering good projector phones...

TI announced new VGA and WVGA DLP-Pico chipsets that have enhanced brightness without increasing power usage over previous designs. The new chips are also smaller and cheaper than before. This is TI's third generation of DLP-Pico chips. We do not have a photo yet... but here are the two previous generations (you can see how then 2nd gen chips are smaller):

DLP chips, Gen1 and Gen2

TI is targeting digital cameras and camcorders for the VGA chip and mobile phones for the WVGA ones.