Hasta La Gadget!

While the global economic crisis has swept aside a number of early innovators in mobile technology, Light Blue Optics finds itself flush with cash this morning. Having secured $15 million in funding, the UK outfit now plans to have its laser-based pico projection engine to OEMs by the end of the year; a move that should result in a tiny retail projector sometime in the first half of 2010. Why should you care? Well, unlike all those LED-based pico projectors now saturating the market, laser-based projectors offer more vivid colors and the ability to auto-focus that mobile image as it’s moved about. Even better, LBO has touch-enabled the system allowing users to interact with the projected display. A second generation engine about the size of a sugar cube will ultimately allow the technology to be embedded in mobile devices like cellphones as we’re already seeing with LED-based engines. Since the supplied image above totally misrepresents the first generation device, we’ve embedded a video of the tech, first published in March, after the break. Skip to the 3-minute mark if you want to avoid the pitch.

[Via PicoProjector-info]

Continue reading Light Blue Optics’ touch-based laser projector hitting manufacturers in Q4 — will look nothing like this image

Filed under: Displays

Light Blue Optics’ touch-based laser projector hitting manufacturers in Q4 — will look nothing like this image originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A projector that fits in your pocket not enough to impress your jaded self? Then how about a pico projector that also functions as a full-fledged touch interface? While details are a bit scant so far, Light Blue Optics says it is working on producing just that, and says it could be released to OEMs as soon as the end of this year. That projector would apparently be able to pump out WVGA or QVGA images at 10 lumens, and it’d boast an “ultra-wide” throw angle and the ability to correct for optical aberrations, which should allow it to be used on any flat surface like in the concept above. Unfortunately, there’s even fewer details on the touch part of the equation, with Light Blue Optics only going so far as to say that it involves an “additional product configuration.”

[Via PicoProjector-Info.com]

Filed under: Displays

Light Blue Optics promises touch-interface pico projectors originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another wild one from the surreal landscape of Computex. DigiLife’s new DDV-JF1 camera bears much resemblance to most mini camcorders, but while it’s perfectly content to shoot 720p footage and show it off on its 2.5-inch LCD, things really start to get wild when you notice that there’s a 640 x 360 pico projector built right into the thing. No word on price or when to expect this thing to show up in your local Dalí-ist electronics shop.

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Displays

DigiLife DDV-JF1 pocket cam shoots HD, packs its own projector originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG’s been getting cozy with Microsoft lately on the Windows Mobile front, and it looks like one of the most significant fruits of that labor to date might find a home on AT&T — eventually. This brassy little number is the LG “Monaco,” which is apparently also known as the “Pico” to some folks; what it’ll eventually be called at retail is anyone’s guess, but the big news is the feature list: 3.6Mbps HSDPA, a 3.2-inch WVGA display, 5 megapixel AF cam, microSD expansion, an add-on pico projector of some sort, and Windows Mobile 7. Though the screen is 0.3 inches smaller diagonally than the alleged minimum specified by Microsoft’s “Chassis 1” guidelines, everything else here would work (and look) great as a next-gen device — and the accessory projector’s a pretty nifty selling point, too. At one point, AT&T had a crazy idea that they’d have this puppy on shelves by September of this year, but seeing we’ll be lucky to have 6.5 devices in our hands by then, this date has undoubtedly slipped since the slide was made. And yes, we’ll admit — we’re intrigued by the gold accents. Is that so wrong? Follow the break for a better view of the phone.

Continue reading LG Monaco: AT&T’s getting a WVGA WinMo7 QWERTY slider?

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

LG Monaco: AT&T’s getting a WVGA WinMo7 QWERTY slider? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 May 2009 08:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What can we say? The new FAVI PJM-1000 pico projector is a mere 4.4 x 1.9 x 0.6-inch beauty, weights about 180g, and sports manual zoom, focus, and video and VGA inputs. This guy will project the business 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. Do you feel the overwhelming urge to project things onto walls? Looking to drop some serious cash on a rather uninspired hunk of plastic? Available now from Amazon for $279.95.

[Via Pico Projector Info]

Filed under: Displays

Favi’s PJM-1000 pico projector – it projects things, baby originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 May 2009 11:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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