Alps Electric introduces “world’s smallest” aspherical glass lens

The problem with projectors is that they tend to take up a fair bit of power and its size and heat just don’t make it viable to be integrated into our smartphones, which is exactly what Alps Electric is attempting to solve as they have recently come up with a 1 mm x 1 mm aspherical glass lens which apparently makes it the world’s smallest. The lens is called the FLGS3 and not only is it incredibly small, but it has a high coupling efficiency (measure of light transmission efficiency) of 73% over the previous 68%. This means less light is required to gain the same level of brightness, which in turn means less heat will be produced.

The savings in power will also mean you can use the projector for longer on a single battery charge, and while this does not necessarily mean we will start seeing our smartphones come with built-in projectors in the future, it could mean smaller and more compact projectors which will be more mobile and portable. Alps Electric has already started production of the new glass lens and plans to ramp up production to 100,000 per month by the end of 2011.