Time of ultra-small projector

Realizing that "plugging" into the tiny cell phone screen for a few hours to watch movies is not comfortable or comfortable at all, many technology companies have raced to create devices that can "project" images from a phone screen to a wall, tablecloth or any other flat surface.

As expected, ultra-small "Pico" projectors, small enough to fit inside the shirt pocket, will appear on the market since the end of the year. In the future, they will be further scaled to be integrated into phones and portable music players.

For example, Microvision brought to showcasing at the CTIA Wireless 2008 conference a prototype of the size of two iPods.

Source: AP However, by the time of the "official release", the final product will have to be about 30% smaller, Director Russell Hannigan said.

In a dark room, Microvision's sample projector emits an unexpectedly bright, clear, loud image. Place the projector 6 meters from the wall and connect it to an iPod Nano music player, images will be printed on walls 6 inches and sharp like DVD.

In brighter conditions, the image is not so impressive, but anyway, it is more comfortable and much better than watching videos on the iPod Nano screen, which is only slightly better than the stamp.

Microvision said this tiny projector model uses technology that is quite different from conventional projectors. Blue, green and red lasers quickly "twisted together" on a moving mirror, about 1 square meter in size.

Far away?

" This technology is particularly energy efficient. The goal of the first projector series is to operate continuously for 2.5 hours ," said CEO Alexander Tokman. However, its price is not cheap, about 300-400USD. With such "unbeatable" prices, plus the size is still quite large, watching the projector is hard to integrate into a mobile phone overnight.

Mr. Tokman hopes the first batch of phones equipped with Microvision projectors will ship at the end of 2009. " Because phones already have batteries and some other necessary electronic components, the cost of projectors may be cheaper. adding a projector, the price of a phone can be up to about $ 100. The two most popular items are cell phones and large TVs, and we are looking for ways to combine both . "

In addition to Microvision, vendors such as 3M and Texas Instruments also brought to CTIA this year micro-projector models, with the promise of "soon to hit the market".

The question is, who will spend money to buy a tiny projector? Tokman hopes teenagers will be a big market. " Our research shows that children like to confine themselves to a dark room and watch movies rather than talking to their parents ."