Scientists create self-healing protective coating, deliver killing blow to screen protectors

Dutch researchers from the Eindhoven University of Technology have created a non-stick protective plastic coating that heals itself when scratched. As far as I can tell, as long as the new coating isn’t completely penetrated, it should continue to heal itself almost indefinitely.

From non-stick frying pans to antibacterial coatings on clothes, and from anticorrosion coatings on cars to the oleophobic coating on the iPhone 4, coatings are a very important part of modern day life. The problem is, coatings also tend to be expensive, and so they’re usually applied very thinly. As a result, as soon as you sustain that first scratch, all bets are off — as your old, scratched, non-stick frying pan can attest.

Now, the science behind this self-healing coating is fairly tricky, but here’s the basic gist. The Dutch material scientists came up with a coating formulation that separates itself into three layers: A top layer that repels water, a middle layer of polymer “stalks,” and a lower layer reservoir of the coating’s active ingredient. When the top layer is scratched, the active ingredient automatically climbs the stalks and self-heals, returning the non-stick surface to its former glory.

What isn’t clear is whether this same approach can be used for other kinds of coating, but considering most coatings are polymer-based, and that the research paper explicitly sets out to find a way of producing self-healing coatings of different varieties, I would be cautiously optimistic.

As far as gadgets are concerned, self-healing coatings could replace screen protectors on smartphones and tablets, and possibly provide better protection against dirt and fingerprint smudges. There is also interest in self-healing circuit boards, but micro metal capsules that break open and fill any cracks are a better solution in this case. Beyond gadgets, this self-healing coating will probably be used be on cars (never wash it again!), airplanes (less dirt, less air resistance), ships (less algae/barnacles, less water resistance), frying pans, and possibly plastic tools and appliances, such as self-healing contact lenses.

Read more at Advanced Materials: DOI: 10.1002/adma.201200807 [paywalled], or an older (preliminary?) version of the research [PDF]

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LG’s new 440 PPI display is way too much of a good thing

LG has unveiled a new smartphone display that packs a 1920×1080 resolution into a 5-inch screen. The display, which is based on what LG calls Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching (AH-IPS), is expected to ship in the second half of the year and boasts a pixels-per-inch (PPI) density of 440. That’s far above Apple’s 326 PPI for the iPhone 4/4S or the iPad 3′s 297 PPI. Ironically, the new screen is both an impressive technological achievement and quite possibly the last display you’d want attached to your next cellphone.

When Apple launched the iPhone 4, it coined the phrase “Retina display” to describe the phone’s high-resolution screen. The term refers to the fact that it’s impossible for most people to distinguish the individual pixels on an iPhone 4 if the device is held 12 inches (30cm) away. The key word here is “most.” If you have 20/15 or 20/10 eyesight, you may still be able to see individual pixels at the one foot mark.

LG’s new screen is much closer to the maximum resolution of a perfect human eye (~477 PPI). If you’re one of these exceptionally rare individuals, you may adore the company’s new wunderkind. For everyone else, all those perfectly indistinguishable pixels are going to carry a significant price in terms of weight and battery life. Without new manufacturing technology, there’s no way around it.

When Apple built the iPad 3, it had to redesign the housing, significantly boost the battery size, and nearly double the backlights, all because of the device’s monstrous 2048×1536 display. All of this led to a marked increase in weight, case temperature, and created a sizable hot spot (pictured above). LG’s 5-inch panel resolution is only 2/3 of the iPad 3, but it packs those pixels into an extremely small area.

Longer term, there are display technologies that will reduce power consumption — Sharp has IGZO, Samsung has invested in LTPS (low temperature polycrystalline silicon) and LG is working on OLEDs. At 440 PPI, however, LG has already nearly hit the fundamental limits of the human eye. We’re not knocking the technical achievement, but we think customers will ultimately be better served by technologies that reduce power consumption, improve screen visibility when outdoors, and allow for more accurate color reproduction. It’s not even been two years since the iPhone 4 debuted, but the era of PPI as a meaningful product differentiator (above the bottom-end, anyway) may soon be over.

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Samsung Galaxy S3 unveiled: Is this the phone that will finally topple Apple?

On stage at Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London, Samsung has unveiled the next king of the Galaxy line of smartphones: the Samsung Galaxy S3. Curiously, despite the fever pitch expectations, the Galaxy S3 isn’t all that remarkable — at least hardware-wise. The star of the show was a whole array of new software applications, such as AllShare (which is very similar to Apple’s AirPlay), S Beam, Buddy Photo Share, and S Voice (which is very, very similar to Siri). The Galaxy S3 will be released in Europe and Asia on May 29, and the US in June.

Appearance-wise, with an attractive ceramic blue backplate, the Galaxy S3 is definitely a bit of a departure from Samsung’s characteristic dull black and gray designs — but the S3 certainly isn’t as distinctive or visually appealing as the iPhone 4. Under the hood, as expected, there’s either a quad-core Exynos 4412 clocked at 1.5GHz (which is only for 3G markets, and will probably never be available in the US), or a dual-core Snapdragon S4 clocked at 1.5GHz. We will publish a hands-on review, with the full hardware and software specs, later today.

The bigger story with the Galaxy S3, though, is that it will probably be the phone that finally topples Apple’s lead in the US smartphone market. Worldwide, on the back of the S1, S2, and a slew of other popular handsets, Samsung is by far the largest smartphone and dumbphone vendor. In the US, however, Apple has held the majority share of the market ever since the release of the first iPhone in 2007. Just this morning, market research group NPD published data that shows Samsung’s US smartphone market share rising by 140% in the last year; as of today, Samsung has a 24% share of the US smartphone market, up from just 10% this time last year. Apple, by comparison, has 29% of the market.

If the Galaxy S3 is as successful as its forebears, there’s no reason that Samsung’s massive growth spike won’t continue. Come Christmas, Apple might have to come to terms with no longer being the front runner — a shake-up that might have all sorts of odd repercussions. Of course, this is assuming that the Samsung Galaxy S3 is actually released in the US in a timely fashion. We’re told that carriers don’t want a repeat of the Galaxy S2 snafu, so here’s hoping.

Back to reality: I’m still at the Samsung Unpacked event in London. I’m surrounded by booth babes and hordes of white and blue Galaxy S3s. I don’t know why I’m still typing — it’s time to play with them!

Updated: Read our hands-on impressions of the Samsung Galaxy S3.

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Why Google and Android users aren’t paying any attention to the new iPad hype

Like most of you, I have been discussing thenew iPad with my technophile friends, ripping apart the news and taking a look at what the big deal is. During the course of our conversations, the overarching question that we are working to answer is “What will Google do to counter this new device with Android OS?” The largest reason for us looking for answers to that question is the inevitability of our group getting asked for our opinions by friends (and editors).

While there have been times where we have been pretty impressed with the technology that Apple has announced, this was different. While we agreed that the new screen resolution is going to be nice, there really isn’t anything game-changing that would make the tablet device a must-own. This is the same reason why Google and its Android team doesn’t care about this release, and aren’t scrambling to one-up Cupertino with some killer feature for the upcoming Jelly Bean update.

As a user of a number of Android devices, including a Galaxy Tab 10.1, the different features that Tim Cook and his team rattled off were underwhelming. I will totally concede the point that the Retina screen is a large step forward for mobile computing, but at the same time is a bit of a marketing ploy. It’s interesting that Apple made the effort to explain away the fact that the new iPad’s screen can have the Retina classification even though it only has a PPI of 264 compared to the 326 that the iPhone 4 packs into its screen. While the viewing distance math presented on stage is correct, it does still smack of marketing spin. Nevertheless, the resolution is pretty amazing for a portable device. However, nothing else that was announced made me envious in the least because they were largely inconsequential.

Take for example the dual-core A5X. While I won’t say that multi-core computing in mobile devices is a bad thing, it’s a bit humorous to me since the applications available right now don’t take full advantage of the power available. This fact isn’t something that I attribute to just iOS; Android has the same issue. Nvidia was so desperate to make money on the Tegra 2 that it had to create its own application in the Android Market so users could find the apps that were specifically written for the architecture. Don’t get me wrong, hardware advancement is a great thing, but multi-core means nothing to the average consumer except for marketing purposes. If they think there is a device that’s faster and more powerful than what they are currently using, they are going to buy it.

So, sure, the A5X has gotten a spec bump in the fact that it has a quad-core GPU that will give a performance boost, but it’s hardly a leap forward in technology. Neither is the addition of LTE connectivity — while it’s certainly a nice-to-have it’s not a show stopper. For Android users its almost become a standard feature for those on Verizon, despite the fact that it’s a vampire on battery life. Speaking of which, I am curious to see if the new iPad’s battery can last nine hours while on LTE. I am doubtful to say the least.

Wednesday’s announcement left me completely underwhelmed as a technophile and an Android user. Unlike other fans of the little green droid, I don’t want Apple to go anywhere. The relationship right now between Google and Apple is like that of the Red Sox and the Yankees. They hate each other in public, but secretly admire what the other is capable of. This causes intense competition that only benefits us as consumers. I was hoping for an amazing device that would force Google’s hand to actually take a hard look at the issues facing its mobile OS. Instead of a major hardware upgrade, Cupertino presented a hardware sidestep (at best) that is going to split the iPad brand and cause market confusion.

There’s a very specific reason why the company decided not to call it the iPad 3 and to keep the iPad 2 around for awhile. Apple couldn’t in good conscience call this device the next generation of its tablet line. This is to be admired… because it isn’t! If the new iPad had been called the iPad 3, it would have looked a lot like Samsung’s misstep with the Vibrant on T-Mobile. If you will remember, Sammy released the Vibrant on T-Mobile which people flocked to buy, only to release the Vibrant 4G less than a year later with specs that should have been present in the original version. By making the differentiation, Cook and his company avoided a consumer confidence fiasco. Keeping the iPad 2 around at a lower price will serve to keep sales brisk, as Cupertino knows that there isn’t enough reason to jump for the new device if you already own the second generation.

While the consumers will certainly flock to their local Apple retail stores to be among the first to own the new device, there really isn’t much reason to. With no major leaps forward besides an almost-Retina display that will still be playing high-def content on a 4×3 aspect ratio (hope you like those black bars), there is nothing to concern Google and its Android users. Both groups are looking ahead to the Tegra-3 armed tablets coming down the pipe from Asus and Samsung, which we hope will raise the technology bar to a higher level. Hopefully next year’s iPad release (the iPad 4? The newnew iPad?)  will bring something awesome to the table to continue to force innovation, because this new iPad certainly didn’t.

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Immersive video walls will put Retina displays to shame

Conventional wisdom dictates that the larger the screen, the further back a viewer needs to be for comfortable viewing. Parents are constantly bugging kids to sit further from the TV, and most people don’t like to get stuck too close to a movie theater screen either. So it makes perfect sense that the tech industry turned this phenomenon into a feature war, starting with Apple claiming that the iPhone 4 family have “Retina displays,” detailed enough so that at a typical distance of 12 inches its IPS screens are claimed to have more resolution than your eye, and therefore are some sort of perfection — at least in detail.

Excitement over this marketing claim-turned-buzzword has led to speculation on the maximum resolution needed for all sorts of other displays, especially monitors and TVs. Pundits have started claiming that the world will end at 4K displays (at 3840×2160 they are double 1080p resolution in each dimension) since from TV viewing distances any greater resolution is speculated to be overkill. That sort of thinking is the product of very limited imagination. It’s based on the assumption that the viewer is looking at the entire contents of the display at once. Typically true for conventional TV shows and movies, but less and less so with screens packed with augmented content, ultra-high definition sources, and immersive videoconferencing.

Don’t believe it? Look out your window. Now walk over to it. Stand next to it. Still looks pretty good, doesn’t it? Doesn’t strain your eyes, and it probably doesn’t bother you that you can’t see everything outside all at the same time. Next imagine a display with the same resolution — and perhaps even the same dynamic range — projecting an image of another place. Decades ago that type of video wall was the subject of science fiction, as in Ray Bradbury’s parlor walls, but we are getting closer to making them a reality. For example, Sharp’s “5D” feature attraction uses 156 LCD screens to create an immersive experience for up to 32 parkgoers at a time.

For me, the “aha” moment was seeing the prototype 8K (four times the resolution of 1080p in each direction) 84-inch display Sharp demonstrated at CES. I could walk right up to it and feel like I was looking through a window at a scene on the other side. Only the fear of being rude to the other couple dozen gawkers kept me from standing next to it in something of a trance as scenes of the Capitol mall and New York City passed by.

There is also good reason to doubt that Apple’sRetina displays have truly matched what the eye is capable of. Optical experiments have shown that humans can actually detect detail up to 600 pixels-per-inch at a 12-inch distance (nearly double the 326 PPI density of Apple’s Retina displays). Limitations on source material, video controllers, and displays have conspired to make our current video walls more of movie screen on steroids than anything you’d want surrounding your living room, but there is good reason to believe displays won’t stop when they reach any arbitrary “retina” threshhold.

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RF MEMS enables auto-tuning, single-radio, anti-death-grip smartphones

Believe it or not, one of the most important parts of a mobile phone — the antennae — is also the most low-tech. There might be a hundred-million-transistor CPU at the heart of everything and a state-of-the-art Retina Display on the front, but the antennae for GSM, LTE, WiFi, and Bluetooth, are simply dumb pieces of metal.

This is how Antennagate came to pass: Despite the iPhone 4 being a consummate fondleslab of bleeding-edge gadgetry, its antenna was just a piece of (very attractive) metal — and when your water-filled, fleshy fingers touched the metal, it attenuated (weakened) the signal and resulted in dropped calls. Devout followers were outraged by the fact that an Apple device could be defeated by such material, mundane means, and eventually Steve Jobs was forced to hold an emergency press conference. This is where Jobs demonstrated the infamous “death grip” required to make a call on the iPhone 4, and also where he explained that every smartphone has similar issues.

Fortunately, though, for Apple and every other mobile device maker, there’s finally an alternative to normal antennae: RF MEMS — or, if you prefer the complete tongue-twister, radio frequency microelectromechanical systems. RF MEMS, as the name suggests, are semiconductor chips that can alter their physical (mechanical) state. In the case of an antenna, RF MEMS can be used to make antennae that automatically tune and re-tune themselves to both incoming and outgoing signals.

In other words, if you put your finger on an RF MEMS antenna it can automatically re-tune itself so that no calls are dropped. Furthermore, RF MEMS can react to atmospheric conditions and re-tune your phone’s radio to improve 3G and LTE data throughput (by up to 40%, apparently). Most importantly, though, RF MEMS paves the way towards devices with just a single antenna and transceiver.

As you’re probably aware, modern smartphones have an insane number of radios — GSM, 3G, CDMA, W-CDMA, LTE, Bluetooth, WiFi, and even FM and TV radios in some cases. Every single one of these has its own silicon circuitry, and usually its own antenna too. With RF MEMS, all you need is a single antenna and transceiver. Much more space efficient.

 

 

Finally, lest you think this all sounds too good to be true, RF MEMS is already shipping in commercial products. According to iSuppli, a company that tears down and reverse engineers computers, theSamsung Focus Flash contains a RF MEMS chip made by WiSpry.

WiSpry, which was showing off its RF MEMS wares at CES 2012, refused to confirm iSuppli’s findings — but if it really has landed a deal with Samsung, 2012 could finally be the year where dropped calls become a thing of the past.

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