The Samsung Smart Window is a window, but it’s a display. It’s a giant transparent touchscr een you can use as a window. It’s a see-through, window iPad. It’s amazing. It only takes a few features to drive home how crazy this technology is. For instance, it comes with a blinds app. If you activate it, you can slowly open and close the digital blinds and affect the amount of actual light that comes in. It’s also a one-way mirror, meaning that you don’t have to be afraid of passersby seeing you or what’s on your screen; they’ll only see themselves. As if all that wasn’t enough, because the Samsung Smart Window doesn’t need backlight units (it uses natural light for that), it uses about 1/10th of the electricity that a standard LCD display its size would use. And in the dark, it has transparent backlight units you can use at the cost of a little more power, so you’re always covered. Now, this is doubtlessly awesome, but there are a few questions to be raised about its application, most of which lead back to its presumably high price tag. First off, if you use this as a window, it’s going to be exposed to the outside world. Remember having to do a week’s worth of chores to pay back the cost of a broken window after a wild foul ball? Imagine years of indentured servitude ahead. Secondly, how much use are you really going to get out of staring out the window and using it as a touch screen? Chances are you already have more portable touchscreen devices than you could possibly need or want. On top of that, reaching up to use a vertical touchscreen could be awkward and tiring if you do use it a lot. Tom Cruise reported being sore after filming the UI sequences in Minority Report, so you might get sore living them, and probably pay a pretty penny for it too. All that aside, how amazing is this? A huge, transparent, one-way mirror touchscreen and it’s going into mass production in just a few months. We are living in the future. And while you may not want to actually shell out for one, it’s a least a great piece of tech to lust after.
