First we heard about a projector small enough to slip into the bottom of a cell phone, and now that component is on its way into a Motorola handset. The PicoP, a miniature projector created by Microvision from a minuscule DLP chip made by Texas Instruments, will be installed on a prototype cellphone that will be capable of projecting a widescreen image at a resolution of 854x480 pixels—that's better than DVD quality. The resulting image won't be home theater-sized, but will measure around 15 inches diagonal, about the size of a typical laptop screen.

Motorola and Microvision didn't say how much these projecting cellphones would cost or when the prototype would be finished. However, as this technology is refined and mass produced, a projector could easily become just another common component inside of most cell phones, as camera chips are today. Then, watching video or giving presentations with a cell phone, currently a frustrating experience, will become as ordinary as snapping a picture with a cell phone camera. — Charlie White

Microvision