Pico Projectors: A profound impact on mobile photography

Though the pace of technology innovation in the mobile, computing and imaging areas is dizzying, a lot of these innovations don’t necessarily have a direct impact on consumer usage models, but represent incremental advances ‘behind-the-scenes’.

That is not the case with ‘pico projectors’.  What are pico projectors and why does it affect mobile photography?

What is a Pico Projector and where can you buy one?

If you don’t already know, Pico Projectors are amazingly small projectors that primarily will  be integrated into ‘intelligent phones’ and digital cameras (but also a much wider variety of consumer electronics devices).  They use a laser or LED light source and micro-mirrors to project an image up to 100′ big.  They are already available for purchase.  If you’re inclined to buy one, please consider doing it through  our Amazon affiliate link–it costs you nothing extra and gives us money to generate more great content!

You can view a demo video below:

You can buy one from Amazon for under $300 from Favi, the PJM-1000, which can project with a 4:3 aspect ratio, a native 640 x 480 resolution (1280 x 800 max), 80:1 contrast ratio, and 12 lumens power. The max image size is 100-inches, and the max projection distance is 12 feet.  There are several others available from Optoma, Aiptek etc.

Samsung has already announced a mobile phone with a pico projector built in, based on Texas Instruments’ DLP technology.  It should be available in Korea and Europe soon and following in the U.S.  You can read more about it here.  This particular phone also includes a 5MP camera and an OLED display.

According to people who have bought the projectors, the image quality is quite good and you can use iPhones, notebook PCs, and other devices as inputs.

Why will this impact mobile photography and photography in general?

The impact is so large, that it’s hard to qualify all the ways in one post.  For starters, it will make slideshows available in any room anywhere without a need to find compatible inputs, cords, TVs, etc.   It will socialize image and video sharing in a way that hasn’t yet been as convenient or ad hoc.  Imagine that you will (with a future version of the iPhone) be able to take your pictures and video, edit them, and project them for viewing by family, friends or co-workers anywhere you have low light and a wall, all with the same device.  Also, you will be able to download (legally, of course) a movie in HD, onto your mobile device, and then later project it on a screen or wall and watch it with whomever you choose–with no need for a power source other than what is built into your phone–because not too long from now, you will have fuel cell batteries in your phone !

Today, when you want to show someone your photos on an iPhone, you have to hand it to him and then narrate over his shoulder.  With pico projectors, you instantly participate in the slide show.

It will also usher in new forms of performance art — imagine hundreds or thousands of iPhones simultaneously projecting the same image or related images all over a stadium or building wall.

This is only the first of probably many mentions of this technology and of devices which contain it.  I’ve been tracking consumer imaging and playback technology for more than 20 years, and I think this is a key milestone, esp. as it relates to the presentation and consumption of photography.

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Tagged as: Analysis, Hardware, image sharing, pico projector, social networking