The idea of a projector in a watch is already a few years old. At the CES trade fair in Las Vegas five years ago, I got my hands on it Haier projector watch. It was just a demo to outline the watch’s future. However, projectors in watches are still taboo even today. They are waiting for a big “player” who could properly promote the watch projector. And that could soon become South Korea’s Samsung.
And that’s partly because Samsung was the first major manufacturer to put a smartphone with a projector on sale. Although it probably wasn’t used by “everyone else”, if you say the name Galaxy Beam today, you probably think of a deep yellow phone with a black stripe equipped with a mobile projector. In a similar vein, the brand could continue with smart watches, as it has patented a projector that is part of the wearable on the wrist.
Samsung has patented a smart watch with a built-in projector. The diagonal of the image projected on the outside of the palm may be higher than the diagonal of the physical display of the watch
Samsung has patented a watch that projects an image onto the outside of the wrist or hand. The projector contains several lenses and LEDs that are arranged in an arc. In this way, the watch display would be mirrored on the wrist or a completely separate image and video stream sent to it by an application from the watch or from the phone. It also follows that the primary use, as in the case of a projector in a mobile phone, would be the projection of multimedia content.
Does a watch have something that a smartphone doesn’t?
The LEDs themselves could adjust their brightness and focal length on the fly. However, even with smartphones, the projector was extremely demanding on the battery. Of course, the projection distance will be very short with the watch, but even then the projector would definitely suffer from very fast battery discharge. But for now it is only a patent, which may eventually end up unused in a drawer.
Haier watch with built-in projector (CES 2018):
Do you think the idea of a projector in a watch is a step in the right direction? The projector has not made a significant impact on the smartphones we use every day. Do watches have something extra compared to smartphones?
Source: USPTO
