It always pays to watch out for the underdog, be it in sports matches or in industry competition. This being HWZ, the latter is the focus of this entry, specifically the mobile phone industry. Big names that immediately come to mind include Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson. China King, or CKing, is obviously not one of the big names. Yet they have made an announcement that will not be ignored by any of the former – the first commercially available “phone-projector”.

I would have stood up and cheered, except for the fact that CKing did a styling mis-step and created this revolutionary first using the iPhone as a template. It’s a known phenomenon that nearly all popular phone models will quickly result in a (usually) Chinese-made copy coming out into the market, and by far the most popular “target” has been the iPhone. It’s unfortunate that CKing hasn’t let go of their uhmm.. creative re-interpretations of popular models and create their own cutting-edge design. Perhaps all their funds were used in the R&D department, leaving nothing for their style/design bureaus (if any).

                                             Is it so hard to make new, unique icons?

This doesn’t change the fact of the first truly available cellphone – cum – projector, and that a virtually unknown company like CKing is pushing it out to market. Its claims remain to be tested, but all available details so far indicate a well endowed specification list for the projector considering this is a pioneering model. LCoS-based technology combined with a LED light source is said to be able to project a 30”, 640-480 screen onto any suitable flat surface. Claimed run time for the projector is an incredible 2 hours, even with a LED light source – this is one claim I’m pretty sure is exaggerated. Better to just plug in the phone when displaying anything for 2 hours.

Not everything is nice and rosy with this phone, along with the dubious battery life claim and iPhone-fail design, the phone itself is big and heavy – it is after all more of a cellphone-projector rather than a projector-cellphone. Balancing this is the fact that this is a proof – of – concept, with upcoming models sure to improve on this first release. Many would not mind owning this CKing phone if only for the priviledge of carrying a projector in a (large) pants pocket, if they can get over the awkward design that is. Another group that would be taking a good, long look at this phone will be the big names in the mobile phone industry; they may not consider this as a threat, but then again being first has its own advantages. Big-name brands will surely be quicker off the line with new “projector” models after this release.

                                              The projector element is probably based on something similar to this model from 3M.