The Holographic Smartphone Display Is Real, and It's Awesome

 (Photo: Star Wars/Lucasfilm)

BARCELONA, Spain –– “Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”

Ever since R2-D2 beamed out a tiny hologram of Princess Leia in Star Wars, 3D projection has been a pop culture mainstay and the dream of many a techie.

If one company has its way, your next smartphone, tablet, or smartwatch could be just as capable as everyone’s favorite droid.

Silicon Valley-based company Leia (yes, like the princess) is developing a technology that gives any LCD display the ability to generate 3D holographic images. It showed off a public prototype of its screens for the first time at Mobile World Congress. 

While Leia’s holographs won’t be projected like the hologram of Leia inStar Wars, they will offer a true sense of depth and be viewable from up to 64 different angles without any special glasses. A 3D movie, on the other hand, can only be seen from one angle.

As an example of what the tech can do, you’ll be able to open Google Maps on your smartphone, zoom in on the Empire State Building, and move your head around it to see every side of the tower in 3D, as if it’s actually right in front of you.

 Similarly, you and your friend could be looking at the same image, but if you’re standing in front of it, you’ll only see its front, while your friend standing on your right will only see the object’s right side.

The technology works by augmenting the direction of light coming out of an LCD display. Your typical LCD, like the one used on the iPhone, has two layers: a backlight that produces light and a second panel that guides that light.

Leia’s technology, however, replaces the light-guiding panel with its own panel, which directs light in very precise directions. It’s this ability to direct light in such an exact way that creates the holographic effect.

But not just any image can be seen as a hologram. Leia actually takes 64 photos of a single object viewed at a slightly different angle and combines them into one picture.

Viewed on a computer screen, the completed image looks like a jumbled mess, with each of the 64 photos stacked on top of each other.

When pushed through Leia’s panel, though, the light from each photo is directed in such a way that each image appears next to each other in a specific order. So instead of having 64 shots of the Empire State Building on top of each other, you have a perfect 3D 360-degree image of the tower.

The only downside to Leia is that its images have to be viewed within a 60-degree arc of the display. Go beyond that and the hologram looks flat.

Interestingly, the technology behind Leia was originally intended for a very different purpose, according to Leia’s co-founder and CEO, David Fattal.

While working at Hewlett-Packard, Fattal was developing a replacement for copper cable called optical interconnects, which are able to send information at high speeds via light when directed toward them in a specific direction.

When he realized that the same technology could be used to create 3D holograms, Fattal left HP, bought back the patents from the company, and founded Leia with his longtime friend and former Wall Street investor, Pierre-Emmanuel Evreux, and fellow HP alum, Zhen Peng.

As it stands, Leia is still in its early stages, although the company says it will have a developer kit available for testing by the end of this year. That means big-name companies like Apple and Samsung could soon begin working on smartphones and tablets with 3D hologram capabilities.

Fattal hasn’t said what companies are interested in the technology, but based on how well it works, and how easy it would be for a company to implement in its existing products, we wouldn’t be surprised if the biggest names in tech are looking at Leia with some interest, from many different angles.

Now if someone could just get to working on a functional X-Wing, our dreams would be complete.