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Motion Controlled Smartphone Previewed
BoB writes "The folks at MobileBurn have had a chance to play in detail with a new motion controlled smartphone prototype by MyOrigo, called 'mydevice'. Surprisingly, it actually works quite well, and the writer claims it's fun to use, too. Is this the start of a whole range of motion controlled devices?" We covered a previous showing of MyOrigo's device a few months back.
Also, no mention of outdoor screen brightness/contrast that I could find. That could be a killer with no real buttons.
I did RTFA. That's how I know they talk about motion control and mirroring. But UI design that fails to take into account how we use devices - and I'm not stretching anyone's imagination by suggesting that mobile phones are primarily used by people on the move - is bad UI.
If these features prove unusable to anyone moving at average walking speed or higher, then what yse are they? (NB. I'm not saying that is the case, only asking what use they are if it is so.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
There is a button on the side you hold when you want to scroll, so it won't scroll when you don't want it to. Also, it automatically goes to landscape when you turn the handset sideways. The "Haptic" feedback seems interesting, too, but I bet it's a real battery hog.
Seriously, if they can make these things usable I'd be most, most happy:
I've now had 2 or 3 relatively expensive mobiles and every single one has at some stage or other had problems with the keypad - it's gutting to have a nice swanky phone but still take 5 minutes to do the most simple tasks.
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
It's surely electromechanical. As in MEMS. I played with a MEMS accelerometer once... microscopic springs, cost about $10. SSOP is a bitch to solder.
Doom on iPAQ is all very well, but wouldn't you rather play an FPS on your PC ? I would. The real issue with games content is exploiting the potential of having a hi-res motion control system as standard. This article in The Guardian mentions that a game-oriented release of the device is being considered. If this rumour has any basis in fact then I suspect we can look forward to something a bit more interesting than ports of Doom <yawn>.
There's considerable biological and evolutionary evidence that motion (gesture) is intimately related to the development of language and the brain. See Section I of "Sense in Communication," available at www.galbithink.org. So I think that incorporating more bodily movement into digital games will be an important future trend, even if N-Gage hasn't quite gotten it right. For a different device that does this, consider EyeToy.