Imagine being able to project a PowerPoint presentation or an HD movie, directly from your smartphone onto whatever wall or screen is in front you. Fortunately, you don't have to imagine because Samsung has just released the Galaxy Beam, the first-mass market smartphone with a built-in 15 lumen projector. We had a chance to go hands-on with a Galaxy Beam here at Mobile World Congress and were impressed with how easy it was to project any piece of content onto a nearby wall.
The Galaxy Beam has some reather average, mid-range specs, including a 4-inch screen that runs at 800 x 480, a 1-GHz dual-core CPU, a 5-MP camera with a 1.3-MP front facer, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. What really makes this device stand out is the project which sits on its top-side. By simply hitting the projector button on the right side of the device, the on-screen content is beamed out whether its a movie, a web page, a photo, or a presentation. Because the Beam uses a dedicated button, the projection feature will work on any app.
In our brief hands-on, we were able to project a movie onto a wall in front of us. However, since the room we were in was not dark, the image was a bit hard to see. However, when we visited a dark projection room that Samsung had set up, the projected images were clear and colorful.
Samsung tells us that the Beam can create an image that's up to 50-inches wide, larger than most TVs. Better still, reps said that, though the projection battery life is not yet rated, the phone should be able to keep beaming for well over 3 hours, long enough to watch a Lord of the Rings movie or sit through a really epic presentation.
