Samsung Galaxy Beam unboxing and demo video

Remember the Pico Pocket projector that we reviewed a few years ago? Well what happens when one of those mates with a mobile phone? You get offspring that look like the Samsung Galaxy Beam of course!

We never got to play with the original Beam announce a in 2010 (the i8520) and to be honest I don’t even know if that made it to market in the end, maybe it was a little too soon but this new model Galaxy Beam (i8530) is on sale now and you can pick it up from the chaps at Clove Technology.

The Beam has quite a decent specification even without the projector; rocking 768MB RAM, Dual Core 1GHz CPU and 5MP camera. It may not be top of the range but add in the DLP projector and we’re looking at a whole new proposition.

The nHD projector (where the hell did nHD come from?!) is 15 lumens and 640×360 pixels. It doesn’t sound too bright and really it isn’t but get a reasonably dark room and the little LED powered projector does a half decent job. How practical that is within real world environments is perhaps questionable. I’m not sure that rocking up to a meeting with this little device in tow and asking for the lights to be turned off and the blinds closed would really cut it nor can I see it working so well with your mates in the pub.

One disappointment is in the OS department, the Beam ships with Gingerbread 2.3.6 which I hope would see an upgrade in the very near future.

Anyway, check out the unboxing a demo video below and see for yourself.

Samsung Galaxy Beam Specification:

• 2G Network: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• 3G Network: HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
• Dimensions: 124 x 64.2 x 12.5 mm
• Weight: 145.3 g
• Built-in nHD projector
• Touch-sensitive controls
• Display: TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours, 480 x 800 pixels, 4.0 inches (~233 ppi pixel density)
• TouchWiz UI v4.0
• 3.5mm jack
• Card slot: microSD, up to 32 GB
• Internal: 8 GB storage, 768 MB RAM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
• Bluetooth: v3.0 with A2DP, HS
• Camera: 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, Geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection,  720p@30fps, check quality
• Secondary Camera: 1.3 MP
• OS: Android OS, v2.3.6 (Gingerbread)
• Chipset: NovaThor U8500
• CPU: Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9
• GPU: Mali-400
• Sensors: Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• GPS with A-GPS support
• Battery: Li-Ion 2000 mAh

Posted by: Matt