Although Samsung may not be as prolific today in trying new form factors and interesting use cases in its smartphones, the company has not been shy about experimenting with new concepts and launching unique smartphones that have stood out in the market dominated by traditional phone designs. More than a decade ago, the company literally included a compact camera with a power zoom lens in its Galaxy S4 Zoom and Galaxy K Zoom smartphones. Let’s not forget the Galaxy A80’s pop-up rotating camera setup, which served the dual purpose of being your primary and selfie shooter, despite being one of Samsung’s worst phones.
However, one of its most original offerings was the Galaxy Beam. It was an Android phone with a built-in picoprojector, essentially putting a mini projector in your pocket wherever you go. It wasn’t a concept or a limited series like Samsung’s recent Galaxy Z TriFold smartphone. It was launched in 2012 and went on sale in various markets around the world except the United States. The phone was priced around £400 in the UK, with some retailers shipping it to the US for $585.
Galaxy Beam could produce 15 lumens
Neither the Galaxy Beam’s specs as a phone nor its projector capabilities compare to those of modern devices; however, for its time, it performed reasonably well as a mid-range smartphone. For example, it had a 4-inch TFT LCD display with WVGA resolution, a 1 GHz dual-core processor, a 5 MP rear camera and 768 MB of RAM. It also came with a microSD card slot, 8GB of onboard storage, and a 2,000mAh battery. But more importantly, it had a built-in DLP projector made by Texas Instruments, capable of outputting a 15-lumen image to screens as large as 50 inches at 640 x 360p resolution. However, the phone received mixed reviews from experts.
CNET considered it a decent mid-range phone with a projector that worked quite well in dark rooms. However, he added that the projector software needed improvement. Central Projector called the phone projector most suitable when one or two people are watching something. He also expressed frustration with his manual focus and the need for a room in pitch black. The folks at Woozad were more forgiving, noting that they were happy with its overall performance, but skeptical that it would become anything more than a proof of concept. Overall, general opinion was favorable to Samsung’s efforts to cram a decent enough projector into a phone.
The Galaxy Beam was not alone
The Galaxy Beam was neither the first nor the last phone in which Samsung included a projector. Just a few years before the Galaxy Beam launched, the company introduced the Samsung Beam (i8520), which also had a built-in projector. The original Beam actually had better specs than the Galaxy Beam, like an OLED panel and an 8 MP rear camera. Its projector was capable of 15 lumens of brightness.
Samsung also followed the Galaxy Beam with a Galaxy Beam 2. It had a more refined design, a larger screen, and a quad-core processor. However, unlike the Galaxy Beam, it was limited to China and never launched globally. The company even released a few projector-equipped phones before starting to primarily use the Android operating system. One of the phones was a Samsung Show (SPH-W7900, also called Haptic Beam), a South Korean model. It was released as Samsung i7410. Unlike the Beam line, the Samsung Show could only produce 10 lumens. The other phone with a projector was the Samsung W9600, also called AMOLED Beam because of its OLED panel.
