A First Look at Samsung’s Galaxy Beam

A Projector in Your Pocket

The biggest news so far at Mobile World Congress is hidden in a small room in the back of the Samsung booth. Samsung’s Galaxy Beam is a smartphone like no other. The phone has a built-in DLP projector, and puts out a surprising amount of light for its size (15 lumen). Pico projectors are nothing new; They’ve been demonstrated by Samsung and others since 2009, but this one is supposed to ship in the first half of this year.

The first big surprise at Mobile World Congress is from Samsung

Thinner than You Think

The phone is only 12.55mm thick which makes it thinner than an HTC Rezound (and only 3.25mm thicker than an iPhone 4S). The projector project whatever is on your phone screen on the wall up to 50”.

I saw it open a PowerPoint slideshow and project it on the wall. Once open, you can use your finger to draw on the slides. Very cool.

Although Samsung claims this device can play a full movie (up to 3 hours) with the built-in 2000 mAh battery. The device does gets pretty warm, so I’ll be curious to see if this is true.

A special app comes with the Galaxy Beam which lets you select what is displayed and draw on the screen. (See photo on the right)

I’ll write more about the other hot new products from Mobile World Congress later.

– Rick

Copyright 2012 Rick Schwartz. All rights reserved. Linking to this article is encouraged.