GALAXY BEAM

Samsung Galaxy Beam: play smartphone games on a 50in screen

The latest Samsung Galaxy model comes with a built in HD projector, allowing you to project photos, video and games on to any surface

Samsung Galaxy Beam. Why play smartphone games on the small screen, when you can play them on your bedroom wall?

It's the Mobile World Congress this week, which means we'll be innundated with new smartphone annoucements over the next few days. You can check out our live coverage here, but for now my favourite revelation from the pre-show press conferences is the new SamsungGalaxy Beam handset, which can project photos, videos games and other digital content onto any wall, via its built in projector.

According to Samsung, the device will chuck out a crisp HD image up to 50in wide – and is even bright enough to work outside. The 15 lumens projector is accompanies by a special app to make it easier for users to select compatible files from the 8GB of internal memory on the handset.

Even with the projector built in, the phone is a respectable 12.5mm thick and 145.3 grams. It's a little chunkier than many of its rivals, of course – but can they put Angry Birds on your living room wall? No, they cannot.

Interestingly, Samsung has specifically highlighted the gaming possibilities of its new phone, which runs the Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS and has a 1.0GHz dual-core processor. It will no doubt be possible to try any Android game via projection, though Samsung has pointed to the "1000s" of titles available via its own Game Hub service.

I'm not sure how practical this will be, given that you'll need the phone to be steadily positioned to project an image, ruling out any accelerometer-based controls. However, simple touch games may well work – or gamers could employ one of the several Bluetooth joypads compatible with Android devices.

"The Samsung Galaxy Beam gives people freedom to share what's important to them instantly with friends and family," said Simon Stanford of Samsung's Telecommunications and Networks division. "With the Galaxy Beam, people can share content from their smartphone with people around them, using it like a pocket projector to create shared experiences – whether that's watching movies, sharing holiday snaps or a spontaneous presentation."

So alongside projected smartphone gaming – an intriguing proposition – it looks like the dreaded era of the holiday snaps slide show might well be making a nightmarish return. Ah well, you have to take the rough with the smooth where technology is concerned.