Smartphone ‘projects’ a tech future Samsung unveils the Galaxy Beam at the Mobile World Congress in barcelona

Smartphone ‘projects’ a tech future

Samsung unveils the Galaxy Beam at the Mobile World Congress in barcelona

In beautiful Barcelona, a warning shot has been fired at television makers. After giving hell to camera makers, mobile phone manufacturers are set to unleash another game-changer. Samsung, the marauding mobile phone giant, unveiled the Galaxy Beam phone at the Mobile World Congress, which has a projector that can show whatever is on the phone screen — videos or photos — on any flat surface at the press of a button. The projection is equivalent to 50 inches diagonal screen size, or as much as a mega LCD television screen. The clarity isn’t LED class yet, but it’s a very, very decent picture. Samsung claims the ‘ultra-bright’ 15-lumens projector is good even outdoors. Experts expect future iterations of the technology to beam clearer images. Combine that with streaming 3G technology that’s already here, and 4G on the way, and television makers have much to sweat about. Today, top digital cameras sport such projector technology but Beam is the first smartphone to have it. Such ‘pico’ projectors have till now been considered too big to be enclosed inside mobile phones. The Beam, which is 12.55mm thick, is bulkier than peers and kin that hover around 8-9mm in width, but it’s not a bulky brick by any stretch. Many phones available today are of similar dimensions. The Beam also features a 5 megapixel camera, and runs Google's Android 2.3 or Gingerbread software on a 1.0GHz dual-core processor. That, along with 8 GB of internal memory and 768 MB of RAM, powered by a large 2000mAh battery is enough juice for three hours of viewing.