Will the Samsung Galaxy Beam be the projector-phone to finally crack the U.S. market? I got a little time with it today, and the company hopes the new smartphone's thinness and brightness will have us all projecting our videos onto the ceiling.
The Samsung Galaxy Beam is a good-looking, midrange Android smartphone with one special thing: a Cyclopean eye up top that beams a 15-lumen image out the front onto whatever surface you can find. It isn't thick, at 12.5mm, and its soft-touch gray back is accented with a bright yellow band around the edge. The lens doesn't get in the way of slipping the phone into your pocket.
The phone's LED projector, which promises two years of nonstop playback and three hours of video on a charge, shot small but bright images around the conference room where the demo was held. Videos were sharp, and while the 15-lumen brightness didn't stun, it was more than viewable in a dark room. The projector has 640-by-360 resolution, which is a 720p video reduced by half.
To help people get started projecting, the phone will come with mood-maker animations including jumping sheep and constellations, Samsung Product Manager, Will Bin said.
Keeping the phone steady is a real problem, though, and the built-in speaker is far too weak to play a movie to a crowd. Samsung will offer dock and speaker accessories which will stabilize and amplify the phone, Bin said.
There's one odd spec out, though: the Beam runs the swiftly aging Android 2.3 when everyone's talking about 4.0. Bin said the Beam will receive a 4.0 upgrade, although he wouldn't say when.The Beam uses some low-cost parts to shave a few dollars off the price and get the projector in. It runs ST Ericsson's dual-core 1GHz U8500 chipset, for instance, which we haven't seen in a U.S. phone before. It also has a 4-inch WVGA LCD screen, HSPA+ 14.4 and Wi-Fi networking, 8GB of storage with a memory card slot, and a relatively large 2000 mAh battery.
Want to project your images? Hit the button on the top of the right side of the phone.
The Samsung Galaxy Beam's projector lens is on the top of the phone. The projector runs for about three hours on a full charge.
The Galaxy Beam projects a clear 640-by-360 image onto any flat surface. I found it bright enough, and colorful.
The Galaxy Beam is going to need some accessories to reach its full potential. Samsung says a pair of amplifying speakers are coming, as well as a portable mount to hold it still when it's projecting.
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