Turns out that the answer to your question is as soon as the second half of 2015. This is thanks to advancements made by a company called Ostendo, who have managed to create a hologram with their 5,000 PPI projects that they are planning on introducing to smartphones in the second half of 2015, meaning that what used to be fantasy will soon be reality in a little over a year’s time!
Ostendo managed to achieve this by fusing an image processor with a wafer of micro LEDs to create the Quantum Photonic Imager. The result? A projector the size of a Tic Tac that should be able to fit into most smartphones. The company gave a demonstration to the folks at The Wall Street Journal, where they managed to project a 3D dice.
As it stands, Ostendo is working with smartphone OEMs at creating a 2D projector, but they anticipate that the 3D projectors should be arriving in the later part of 2015. According to the company’s CEO and founder, Hussein S. El-Ghoroury, “Over the years, processing power has improved and networks have more bandwidth, but what is missing is comparable advancement in display.” He also states that he believes that “display is the last frontier”.