Hands-On with Samsung's Projector-Phone

An exclusive look at its two great displays and wealth of widgets

By Sean Captain Posted 01.26.2009 at 6:58 pm 7 Comments

0.7 inches thick the Show still makes room for a 10-lumen DLP projector that displays 480-by-320-pixel video and stills Sean Captain

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The Samsung W7900, aka the Show, certainly lives up to its name. In fact, if it had just the gorgeous 3.2-inch OLED screen, the digital TV tuner or the five-megapixel camera, it would be a winner. But the Show combines all those features with the (current) Holy Grail of handhelds -- a digital projector that displays sharp, bright images up to 50 inches.

Our friends at Texas Instruments, which makes the DLP projector inside the Show, let us snag the phone for a quick hands-on.

As with most great gadgets, the Show premiers in Asia. (That may make it the first projector phone to hit the market, depending on when rival Logic Wireless gets its Logic Bolt out.) We don't know exactly when it comes out, but it looks like lucky Koreans will be the first to watch movies and display photos on the big screen, courtesy of any flat or semi-flat surface they find. They will also get to tune in and (we think) record digital TV broadcasts, plus make video calls. We're still waiting to hear if and when the Show or something like it will cross over to these shores.

Below are some key specs. See the slideshow for lots more info.

SAMSUNG SHOW W7900
Projector: 10 lumens, 480 by 320 pixels, up to 50 in. diagonal
Screen: 240-by-400-pixel, 3.2-in. OLED
Wireless: 3G HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps, global roaming (900/1800/1900 MHz)
Cameras: 5-megapixel main, VGA front-facing model for video calls
Size: 4.4 by 2.2 by 0.7 in.
Price: TBD

(Thanks to Canon for providing the FS11 camcorder for this video.)

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7 Comments

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mitEj

01/27/09 at 10:56 am

Sadly this just shows how far behind we have gotten in tech. When he was going through the features we will not get it made me a bit sad.

Hopefully we will get upgraded to the same standard as the rest of the world sometime in the near future.

Beautiful device, I want one.

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kyleb2112

01/28/09 at 3:41 am

How long does the battery last when projecting? <-- A question that should have been answered 20 seconds into the video. Get with it, Popsci.

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Kaccount

02/01/09 at 8:12 pm

King of NERDS - thats great but in america it's useless unless you just want a tiny projector but you can just but a handheld one from america and the heck with the Iphone when I could have one of these.

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dontbother

02/18/09 at 10:50 pm

I'm with kyleb as regards battery runtime, but what's even more interesting is the question whether the phone supports other video sources which would be sort of a killer app together with netbooks such as the Eee or the Acer One.
Uncompressed video of 480x320px @ 25Hz requires 10,98 MB/s, so USB should do the trick and technically all that would be needed is a driver that identifies the phone as a 480x320px projector (and the corresponding hw on the phone of course).
If they didn't pack this one with the functionality I really hope they do with the follow-up model.

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jameshume

from midland, texas

02/19/09 at 1:42 am

man this phone is one of the cool es i have ever seen i really like the DLP projector that what got me to like this phone man us. need more teckfor the people u know teck ruls.

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cardinalsfan1234

03/31/09 at 5:06 pm

I like the phone but the toutch screen could be improved. it took multiple taps to use and it made an annoyng sound when dragging. Also the projector kind of looks blurry.
I want one!!!

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gena

07/24/09 at 1:16 am

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