if it's possible to replace the LCD display of a phone with the small display of a calculator?

[techytechboy]

Hello guys. So recently a thought popped into my head. At first I thought it's stupid and kinda useless. However, I was wandering if it's really possible. What I was thinking  about is that if it's possible to replace the LCD display of a phone with the small display of a calculator? If it's possible, then how? What do you guys think about it? Please let me know.

[Fasauceome]

The answer is almost universally a guaranteed no. If we're talking about a super fancy graphing calculator with an LCD screen, it might be possible, but chances are it's not compatible without drastic modification. 

 

An app that just turns off most of the screen except a little square would be a better idea, and then just have a shell around the phone with buttons that can touch the screen to make it work like a calculator.

[williamcll]

Really depends on what connectors the phone motherboard has. Expect a no in 99% of situations. You have better chances with an ARM SBC.

[Kilrah]

No. But what would you even be showing on that LCD to make your phone usable?

[Arika]

question is less an answer of how, but why? what are you hoping to achieve with such a mod?

[lewdicrous]

[minibois]

You will need some kind of driver board that will convert the signals of the original ribbon cable to a 7 segments display input:

Maybe start here, if you are just curious how those calculator LCD's work:

 

[mariushm]

Not without a conversion chip between them.

 

The LCD screen of the phone (if the phone doesn't have OLED) has a chip on it which converts the digital signal to lines and rows of pixels and into separate red, green and blue pixels and sends the signals to each lcd cell (each pixel on screen).

 

The monochrome LCD screen of a calculator doesn't have any processing chip on it, it's basically just the LCD segments. The calculator chip which does the calculations and takes input from buttons has a build in driver chip which turns segments on and off depending on what needs to be shown on screen.

 

So you would need a conversion chip which is fast enough to take the digital signal (20+ updates per second, let's say 160x120 pixels or higher) and convert RGB to monochrome if needed, then extract just the pixels needed to figure out what to show on the calculator display (ex monitor the area where a number would show up and determine the digits based on which pixels are black and which are white) and then calculate which lcd segments would need to be on and which off.

 

[Ben17]

12 hours ago, techytechboy said:

Hello guys. So recently a thought popped into my head. At first I thought it's stupid and kinda useless. However, I was wandering if it's really possible. What I was thinking  about is that if it's possible to replace the LCD display of a phone with the small display of a calculator? If it's possible, then how? What do you guys think about it? Please let me know.

no

Why would you want to though just curious lol