Research Team Creates Smartphone Virtual Projector to Increase Screen Size

Smartphones are cool little gadgets, there's just no getting around it, but not matter how cool they get they will still have one major drawback until someone figures a way around it: the small screen size. Fortunately, researchers around the world are hard at work on the problem, and one such group, a collaboration between high-tech teams from the University of Calgary, the University of Munich, and Columbia University have come up with something that appears to be a major step in the right direction; namely a virtual projection feature. They've published a paper about it on the Columbia University site.

The way virtual projection works is, an app is developed for both a smart phone and for other devices that have larger screens. When the Smartphone is brought near the other device, the images on the Smartphone screen become visible on the screen for the other device. In essence, the image is broadcast to the, generally bigger screen, reducing eyestrain.

Endgadget, which has seen the new virtual projector in action notes that while it may not be the greatest leap in the history of new technology, it certainly should be an instant relief for those who use their Smartphones in a place where they also have other larger screened devices such as an iPad or even a desktop or laptop computer.

It's actually cooler than it sounds. In watching a video of a user using the app, what's most noticeable is that the images from the Smartphone can be overload on top of what is already there and images from the phone can take up the whole screen, or just a portion of it. Mobi Gyaan, writes that if you wish, you can record and keep all of the imagery that appears on the second device too, creating really good way to move data between the two devices.

The only real downside to the new technology is that it's still in development, which means you can't buy it yet and it doesn't look like it will be out of development any time soon, as the research team hasn't even given the technology an official name.

The holy grail of such technology would of course be an ability to project the image from the phone onto any available surface, like an old fashioned movie projector, except this time it would be in vivid color HD format. And unfortunately, while such a goal is apparently technically, it would add so much to the cost of a phone that most people couldn't afford it. Thus, we'll all just have to wait and see what shakes out.