There are pros and cons to everything in this life, technology included. The more power you have packed into a device, the clunkier it usually is. If it’s cheap, it’s probably buggy. With mini-tablets, portability costs you screen size, which means a group experience is out of the question. Having 10 people huddled around a five-inch tablet to watch a YouTube video is hardly ideal. NionCom, in an effort to circumvent that issue, has a mini-tablet in the works that can project the tablet’s display up on to a wall, enlarged to 100-inches.

Basically, NionCom’s MemoryKick Vision tablet comes equipped with a PicoP projector, so users can share documents, web sites, videos (pretty much anything that the tablet displays) by projecting it in large format on a wall or a projection screen. Specs also include a 4.3-inch capacitive display, and a 2.5-inch hard drive that offers 500GB or 1TB of storage. The MemoryKick Vision tablet runs Android 2.2 Froyo and has full access to the Android Market, so users will be able to download all their favorite Android apps. NionCom also included a 5-megapixel camera, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, HDMI in and out, a USB port and support for an SD card.

The MemoryKick Vision tablet should launch by the end of the year, and while pricing has yet to be announced, we expect to see this thing go for less than $500.

The folks over at PicoPros threw together a video of the tablet in action, projecting the display in 45 inches. It is important to note, as PicoPros does in the video, that the device in the video is actually a design reference piece of hardware, which features a smaller screen than the MemoryKick Vision. Memory, screen-size, and OS version are the only differences between the two, so this video is still a great reference point for anyone interested in this forthcoming Pico projector-equipped Android tablet from NionCom.

[via PicoPros]

The minimum distance on the projector is 50cm, which gives you the equivalent 15 inch display. You can adjust the size of the display being projected by simply moving the projector farther away from the screen. A device this small will have a limited resolution of course, the tiny projector will only display at 640×480.

This isn’t something that you’re going to see at a retail store unfortunately, but you may start seeing it in various personal electronics.

It’s not that there’s a shortage of mobile projectors, but when DoCoMo (Japan’s biggest cell phone carrier) announces [JP] a model for its 55 million customers, it deserves a mention. DoCoMo specifically suggests using the F01 with Fujitsu’s uber-cool “Separate Keitai”, a cell phone that breaks into two parts (and that’s currently available on the Japanese market only).

Weighing 88g, the DLP device is sized at just 11.4 x 5.1 x 1.64cm and produces images measuring between 5 and 66 inches in size at 854×480 (WVGA) resolution. It also features a brightness of nine lumens, 150 minutes of battery life, an analog RGB interface and Bluetooth.

The device can be used to project images, digital TV programs (all Japanese phones have a tuner), games, and Word/Excel/Powerpoint/PDF files.

DoCoMo plans to ship the first 10,000 units to Japanese electronics retailers and its own cell phone shops at the end of this month, probably with a $270 price tag. I am thinking the only chance for the F01 to make it outside this country is when Fujitsu decides to sell the “Separate Keitai” abroad as well.

The K11 is a little different then some of the other projectors coming out though, in that it uses DLP with LEDs as well as the standard lamp configuration. Acer has said that this will give the K11 a display life of 20,000 hours before failure, which is quite reasonable. The K11 also has a built in USB port, and an SD card reader. The 2000:1 ratio will allow you to project widescreen as well as the standard 4:3 format, with a 200 lumen brightness ratio. We’re working on getting one of these to review, and we will be comparing it to a couple of other projectors in this market segment, the 3M and the Optoma.

Japanese owners of Optoma’s DLP projector Pico for use with the iPhone/iPod Touch can soon buy a corresponding 8.5-inch screen [JP] from a company called Hometheater (the projector itself is able to produce 60-inch images). The A5-sized NS-01 will go on sale in Nippon on March 20 for $75.

The portable screen features a gain level of 3.6 and is foldable. It will be available in white, green and black (but only in Japan).

DLP’s first Pico projector phone, Samsung Show aka W7900, is shipping this month in Korea, but DLP just revealed the second generation chipset today at MWC. The new chipset is 20 percent thinner and quieter. It’s also much brighter and has a contrast ratio greater than 1000:1 with a full RGB color gamut. And has a native resolution of 854×480, which is DVD resolution.

DLP’s Pico projector sure has come a long way since we first saw it crammed into a mock BlackBerry Curve.

When this hit my inbox I thought it was one of those small pico projectors crammed into a BlackBerry or something like the 3M MPro110, but it’s a 3.3-pound 7.5- x 8.1-inch projector for business types. It’s a DLP type so that’s a plus and it manages to throw a 2200 ANSI lumens 200-inch 1024×768 resolution image with a 2000:1 contrast ratio. The XD95U will retail for $1,495.

I love how Mitsubishi says this is an economical choice because it’s filterless and has an estimated 3000-hour lamp life (low mode). But then again we are in a recession.

Product Page

Optoma is planning to sell its DLP projector Pico in Nippon starting December 1st. The Apple store will offer the device exclusively until December 19th.

Optoma has unveiled the projector this summer and the specs remain unchanged:

- size: 0.67x2x4.1 inches, weight: 120 grams
- brightness: 10 lumens
- aspect ratio: 4:3
- resolution: 480×320
- contrast ratio: 1,000:1
- speaker: 0.5W
- battery life: about 2 hours

The projector is able to produce images of around 60 inches and will cost $510 (including an iPhone/iPod kit and connector when bought in an Apple store). It’s unknown at this point when and at what price the device will be offered outside Japan.

Are you a small PC fetishist? I sure am. That’s why we’re proud to give away two red hot ARTiGO Pico-ITX PCs with hard drives. What can you do with them? Well, they’re very small…

Have fun building your own portable PC. The VIA ARTiGO Pico-ITX Builder Kit is designed to help DIY enthusiasts utilize all the features of the ultra compact, versatile VIA Pico-ITX mainboard.

The VIA ARTiGO Pico-ITX Builder Kit A1000 includes a 1GHz VIA EPIA Pico-ITX mainboard, compact Pico-ITX form factor chassis, power adapter and accessories.

How do you win?

Leave a comment. We’ll pick one commenter at random. Remember to include your real email address in the E-mail address field. Do not write your e-mail address in the body of the e-mail. To do so invites ridicule and a vague sense of dishonor.

Rules: You can win once per day, but you can enter multiple times per post and per day provided the comment content is different each time.

We first broke this story earlier in the month and now there’s photographic evidence to back it up. Details are still still scant at the moment, but it looks like this tiny Dell projector weighs 1.1 pounds and is LED powered just like the pico projectors from Texas Instruments.

I got a brief hands-on with the latest TI Pico projector over the weekend and it’s much improved from the prototype I saw last year. Texas Instruments has managed to cram that LED lit projector into a BlackBerry Curve. Of course, they stripped everything else out of it, but that’s not really the point. Previous prototypes shown by TI were double, maybe triple, the size of the Curve. TI is certainly getting there and once it’s small enough and efficient enough, we’ll be seeing it in a slew of random places you never thought about.