Who’da thought it?
Back at CES last month we saw the LG Expo, which jumped out at us due to having a tiny projection unit bolted onto it. That ran on Texas Instrument's HVGA projection ship, and at the same show Samsung was showing-off the W9600, which thanks to TI's WVGA chip has a projector built into the body of the phone.
At this year's MWC, as well as the latest OMAP goodness, TI is also showing off its latest ‘DLP Pico engine', called the nHD.
In true semiconductor tradition, this is effectively a shrink of the WVGA chip, that is 20 percent thinner, occupies 50 percent less volume and uses less power - allowing it to be used in regular handsets, not just the latest smartphones.
We spoke to Frank Moizio, manager of DLP's emerging markets business. "Pico projection is a new consumer electronics category," he said. "Projection is fundamentally the biggest image from the smallest box. This allows simultaneous sharing that could further transform mobile devices into social tools."
Moizio reckoned the nHD can project a watchable 20 inch image under normal indoor lighting conditions. It will ship at the the end of Q2 and we can expect to see devices using it within a year. To give you an idea how small the chip is, here are six of them on a bed of rice.
