On Wednesday, May 28, at the company’s TechWorld event in Beijing, China, Lenovo took the wraps off the Smart Cast smartphone, which is based on the idea of the pico projector (or handheld projector), adding the new smartphone to the company’s lineup of concept products.
Peter Hortensius, Lenovo’s CTO, says –
The Smart Cast is the first-ever smartphone to imbibe a built-in laser projector. It touts the smallest pico projector in the world as well as a gesture-based system for control. The rotating projector in the smartphone will enable people to project video games, films or TV shows on a wall with ease. Users can even project controls or keyboards to a surface that is close by.
The projected keyboard isn’t the only feature of Smart Cast. Lenovo imagines the device to have a focus-free laser projector that can send images and videos onto walls (like current pico-projectors, but with a better technology than DLP) and a swiveling mirror part with a kickstand that lets you project on a surface in front of you — think keyboard, virtual piano, Fruit Ninja, and more.
It can do this thanks to being outfitted with a built-in laser projector, infrared motion detector and high-performance algorithms. Lenovo promises it’s a first-ever technology combination that will open up a whole new world of interaction such as the ability to type on a virtual keyboard. There are also plans to make the Smart Cast concept work with productivity apps including the calculator, drawing, note-taking and even editing in Microsoft PowerPoint.
