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Home / News / Hands on pictures – Samsung Beam projector phone

Hands on pictures – Samsung Beam projector phone

While many of the Samsung-related MWC headlines may have focused around the company's new bada OS, the Android-boasting, pico-projector-packing Beam m

The phone is understandably thicker than a regular phone due to its added dose of projector functionality, but at least all the tech is hidden within the shell rather than having to be connected like LG’s Expo offering from CES.

Unlike Sony Ericsson’s newest phones, the Beam packs the latest Android 2.1 under the hood, as well the the new and improved TouchWiz 3.0 UI, which offers up to 10 homescreens.

It also features a large 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, 720p video recording and playback, Wifi, 3G and 16GB storage on board – not specs to be sniffed at.

However, obviously the big selling point for this phone will be the projector, and as it can handle DivX and Xvid playback, as well as Powerpoint documents you can set up your own cinema or meeting room on the fly.

We had a quick go with the projector – you can project content from your phone, or even directly from anything you place in front of the phone’s camera for a live view projection.

As you’d expect, as the picture gets bigger by moving the phone away from the wall, the picture loses brightness. This is when it will benefit most from properly darkened conditions .

It’s not going to rival a fully-featured projector, but for what it’ll probably be used for, it should work just fine.

Check out our hands on snaps above and let us know if you’ll be buying when it comes out in the summer.

Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home