Don't let that story title blow your mind too much. Although a company called Ostendo really is working on a hologram chip for smartphones, we are still quite a few years out from seeing Star Wars level holograms on our smartphones. Despite that, we are probably much closer than many of us would have guessed. According to the report, Ostendo Technologies Inc, a display technology company based in California, is striving hard to make portable hologram projectors in smartphones a reality.
In fact, the company already demonstrated an array of its projectors producing a 2D holographic image. They have even accomplished a miracle by scaling down their projector technology into a tiny chipset which will actually fit into a smartphone. They named this tech, the the Quantum Photonic Imager. Fancy!
The chip currently can project images up to 48 inches diagonally at 5,000 dots per inch. The size of their module with an attached lens is 0.5 cubic centimeters. This is about the same size as a small smartphone camera module. Ostendo plans to introduce their first 2D projector at the consumer level sometime in 2015 at a cost of only $30 per chip.
Beyond that, they are working on a prototype which combines a collection of six of these chips to create a 3D image which can actually be viewed from multiple angles. Obviously the problem here is scaling six of these chips down to fit into a smartphone. It's great that they are working hard to bring it to a smartphone, but I think many of us would "settle" for having this same tech show up in a tablet or other larger device first.
What an amazing world we live in!
Source: WSJ