Sharp has developed a new LCD that is able to be switched between a wide viewing angle and a narrow one with the flip of a switch.
Users will be able to view their email and other things that they may wish to be kept private in public on their mobile phones and/or notebooks PCs without other people being able to see what they are looking at.
As the ubiquitous network society fast becomes a reality, information can be readily accessed in nearly any setting using personal information terminals such as mobile phones, notebook PCs, and PDAs. At the same time, there is an increasing need to provide such portable devices, which are frequently used to handle private information/data, with the capability to “veil” the display so that the screen content cannot be seen by other people in the immediate area.
The new LCD adds proprietary technologies, such as a switching liquid crystal material overlaid on an ordinary TFT LCD so that light is prevented from going to the left or right, thus turning a wide viewing angle to a narrow viewing angle. This will allow people to use mobile devices with peace of mind, since they can change the viewing angle setting depending on the personal nature of the content they are viewing.
Sharp also mentioned ATMs as an example where this technology would be put to good use, which obviously means that they will be marketing these LCDs to banks.
This is probably not a bad idea with as many cases of identity and personal information theft that you hear about all of the time. Sharp says that it will begin mass-producing these LCDs this month.
Chris is a staff writer for murdok. Visit murdok for the latest ebusiness news.
