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Gyroscope Gives CellPhones 'Tilt Control'

Paul Stamatiou writes "You can now control cellphone activities by simply tilting it. "If you have a game involving keeping a car on the road, you do that by tilting," says company spokesman Jan Ahrenbring. The tilting technique can also be used to sweep large virtual pages across the phone's screen, which acts as window on the information."

8 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. Another feature I don't want/need. by vasqzr · · Score: 5, Insightful


    How about 3 day battery life with 6 hours talk time?

    How about good, clear calls?

    How about not magically losing signal when I walk in to another room?

    1. Re:Another feature I don't want/need. by tempest303 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, well, some of us live in the US, where we like to Let the Market Decide(TM), and we apparently Decided to get Screwed with crap like CDMA instead of the pre-existing global fucking standard of GSM. Hooray for free market capitalism! :-P

  2. Driving on Cell Phones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "If you have a game involving keeping a car on the road, you do that by tilting,"

    How about you try keeping your car on the road by NOT talking while driving?

  3. To turn it off... by PiscoX · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... just tilt it vigorously against a wall.

  4. Usefull feature? Hmmm by ultraw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is is only me, but I'm surpised every time some company comes up with some new feature for a cellphone, and they demonstrate it by saying it might come in handy when playing a game? Every new phone is marketeered by saying how much games it has, how much ringtones, how easily you can change the cover,...

    I can't think of a good thing I can do with a phone with a gyroscope in it right now. I assume that anyone can come up with some basic telephone feature that is still missing. One I can come up with is "if busy, present a callback function (Call back in 30 seconds? Yes/No)". Another one is "answer and delete message".

    Oh boy, if only I would design phones...

  5. A solution in search of a problem by Nutcase · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They keep trying to use this "tilt" technology somewhere. I first saw it at PC Expo several years ago (but before it became "techxNY" or whatever) - It was a SD card add on for a palm V. They were making a big deal out of scrolling maps with it. I demoed it, and tried to be polite about it, but the fact is that it is useless.

    There is much less control in tilting a palm while trying to watch the screen scroll, and then tilting it to level again to read the map - and once you tilt it level, you have to switch the toggle to stop it scrolling if you tilt it up to look at it.

    It reminds me of those games where you have a marble and have to make it fall in the hole in the middle of a big plate - you always overshoot the hole and end up on the other end.

    It's a dumb way to solve a problem that has already been solved via scroll bars and/or buttons.

  6. What I really want.... by Crash42 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    is a $20 phone with a 200 hours batterylife for making phonecalls. I don't want a $2000 mp3 playing, fm radio, camera, tilt controlled gamecosole, pda, alarmclock thingy wich btw can also be used (if you ever might want to) to make phonecalls...

    --


    ....Excuse me, but ... ah, forget it...
  7. Rotation by rf0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Also from this months Stuff Magazine there is a perview of this phone on the inside back cover. One other funky thing it can do is that if you rotate it 90 degrees it will actually flip the screen orientation

    Rus