Samsung GALAXY Beam phone with built-in Pico Projector

by Alistair Lowe on 26 February 2012, 17:20

Tags: Samsung (005935.KS)

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With the concept originally demonstrated two years ago back at Mobile World Congress 2010, Samsung has finally commercialised and revealed its Samsung GALAXY Beam smartphone with built-in pico projector. 

 

Not to be confused with Android Beam, Google's implementation of Near Field Communication, this device's name stems from a rather impressive, built-in, 15 lumen pico-projector sporting a 640 x 360 16:9 nHD resolution. Samsung claims that with the device's large 2,000mAh battery, it's possible to achieve around three hours of projection time, with effective display sizes of up to 50 inches.

To place 15 lumens into perspective, this is either superior on on-par with other pocket projectors on the market, though frankly at 12.5mm the GALAXY Beam is one of the slimmer choices, which is exceptionally impressive when you also consider that it's a high-end Android smartphone with all the bells and whistles included.

 

Full device specifications are as follows:

CPU 1GHz Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9
GPU ARM Mali-400MP1
RAM 768MB
Internal Storage 8GB
Other Storage MicroSD
Camera 5MP auto-focus with flash + 1.3MP front-facing
Connectivity BT 3.0 + HS, WiFi b/g/n, MicroUSB, USB 2.0, 3.5mm Ear Jack
Display 4.0 inch 480 x 800 TFT
Projector Up to 50 inch nHD (640 x 360 16:9) 15 Lumen display
Dimensions 64.2 x 124 x 12.5mm, 145.3g
Battery 2,000mAh (approx. 3 hours projection time)

Currently the device runs Android 2.3 with no word on a 4.0 update for the future. We're also yet to discover the release date and pricing for this phone, though with any luck all will be revealed over the coming days at MWC 2012.

HEXUS Forums :: 6 Comments

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Posted by iiee - Sun 26 Feb 2012 18:15
Hmm nHD would that be another way of saying not hd? Other than that looks good honestly i hope its the first of many.
Posted by Scribe - Sun 26 Feb 2012 18:42
iiee
Hmm nHD would that be another way of saying not hd? Other than that looks good honestly i hope its the first of many.

Haha it is a bit cheeky, actually means ninth HD (1/9) the idea is that to have the word HD means it must scale without pixel blending from a normal HD resolution, so you can perfectly take 1920x1080 and divide each dimension by 3 to achieve nHD or just sample every 3 pixels. There's also qHD which is quarter (1/4) and is 960 x 540. Essentially it means you can reproduce a HD feed with less pixels with the least possible distortion to the original image or the least processing power.
Posted by Biscuit - Sun 26 Feb 2012 21:58
im curious about the lumens these state, because they dont sound enough to actually produce an image. Is it completely different using LED micro projectors to using a DLP?
Posted by Scribe - Sun 26 Feb 2012 23:17
Biscuit
im curious about the lumens these state, because they dont sound enough to actually produce an image. Is it completely different using LED micro projectors to using a DLP?

LED projectors still use a secondary technology such as DLP, though can also be used in a direct array, however Lumen counts are typically measurements of the end product of light and so the technology behind the light shouldn't be a factor.

What's most likely a factor here is the relatively short projection distance of a mobile device which will reduce attenuation and the screen size which whilst up to 50 inches, will typically be smaller and so the light is more focused. If you imagine a typical projector produces an image up to 300 inches then vs 50 inches you're looking at needing 5.6 times more light to produce an image of the same brightness.

So if you think the image on a 300 inch projection is acceptable when the projector has say, 2000 lumens, then you'd need 357 lumens on a pico projector at 50 inches to match it.

A far cry from 15 lumens! but at closer distances there's less attenuation (loss of light) and also there are projectors with far less lumens that produce acceptable images to compare to. Also if you instead projected a 32" image you're concentrating the light even more and changing the factor from 5.6 to 13.5 which would only require 147 lumens to match a 2000 lumen projector, and so on.

But yeah, 15 lumens isn't going to look great in a light room.
Posted by Biscuit - Mon 27 Feb 2012 08:30
Cheers scribe, i figured this was the case when they started releasing them but then when it appeared on a mobile phone i thought, ‘may be im missing something’. Obviously i was wrong!

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