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.

Comments

About the name

[Emil Brink]

I'm not sure if it's obvious to English-speaking folks, since I'm too lazy (and/or focused; I'm at work) to check with Greek and other languages, but the word "origo" is Swedish for "origin". I guess that makes sense for the device, and can almost smell the marketing-speak about "putting you at the center" or something... ;)

Slashdotted?

[metlin]

Am getting some weirdo JSP errors.

But here's the Google cache to the rescue.

On the move?

[WIAKywbfatw]

I wonder how well the motion control and mirroring work when you're on the move.

I can imagine how annoying it would be to have web pages scroll when you don't want them to scroll just because you were walking too quickly or the car or train you were travelling in provided a less than perfect ride.

Frankly, it seems like a big gimmick to me. UI that doesn't take into account practicality - UI for UI's sake - is doomed to failure.

Re:On the move?

[Siener]

can imagine how annoying it would be to have web pages scroll when you don't want them to scroll just because you were walking too quickly or the car or train you were travelling in provided a less than perfect ride.

RTFA. There is a button you have to "lightly touch" before the scrolling works, so no accidental scrolling because of random movements.

I do however wonder how controlable the scrolling would be in the situations you mention.

Re:On the move?

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.)

Re:On the move?

[ElGanzoLoco]

Did you read the article? Motion control / mirroring only are activated when you have your finger on that particular touch-sensitive button. Release button, motion control deactivates...

It seems to be a quite interesting device... But they say it's "slightly bigger than the P800", so that's a no-no for me :)

Re:On the move?

[MonkeyINAbaG]

Frankly, it seems like a big gimmick to me. UI that doesn't take into account practicality

I tend to aggree with you.
This phone got a good asskissing evaluation, but looks like it was tested in an office environment, not the natural habitat of a mobile, or cellular devices.
Possibly this technology is suited more for a desktop PC, or other non-critical motionless devices.
I also think this would be difficult to sell to our button-mad consumers, who are the reason for UI anyway.
I won't be buying one until I have no choice.

great . . .

[loraksus]

So not only do people see me "talking to myself" (earpiece) but also me jerking my phone rapidly and waving my arms.
I just need a 3 way call with 2 shrinks to be given one of those nifty white jackets with the long sleeves.
"I'm not crazy. . . Yes I am. . . Shut up, all of you."

Bigger than the P800

[trentblase]

We're going in the wrong direction, people!

Also, no mention of outdoor screen brightness/contrast that I could find. That could be a killer with no real buttons.

Another reason for people to think you're crazy..

[bakreule]

First it was mobile phones in general. Remember way back when you could hear someone talking in public, but there were no answering voices? ("Who the HELL is he talking to???")

Next came handsfree with autoanswering. It scared the crap out of me when the guy in front of me in line, sorta-kinda looking in my direction, would all of a sudden say, "Hello? Hi! How's it going?"

Now people will think you're epiletic or something when they see you waving a phone about crazily. Reading email isn't that bad, but what happens when you install Pacman?

Although maybe it would be good exercise against carpals....

Stupid name ...

[straybullets]

"Can I use your my device, please ?"

Re:Stupid name ...

[Ripplet]

I absolutely agree. I hate any name that begins with "My". It's just pants!!

It's as if some years ago, some marketroid deep in the basements of Redmond once wanted to leave a bit earlier than normal on a friday afternoon:
Engineer: "Hey marketing dude, what shall we call this new thing we've got here?"
Marketing Dude: "Aw hell I dunno, let's just call it 'MyThing'".

Then, incredibly, other marketroids the world over simply gave in and got assimilated:
Marketroid1: "Well that's it then, Microsoft have come up with the ultimate naming scheme, might as well take our stock options and retire now."
Marketroid2: "Hey wait a moment, they can't trademark just the 'My' part of it right? So we can call our other thing that we make 'MyOtherThing', yay!"

Marketroids the world over rejoiced, and never did any work again, even though they were getting paid even more than before because they were coming up with names as good as Microsoft's.

Unfortunately, the rest of us got stuck with the stupid friggin' Mythis, Mythat, Mykitchensink, ad infinitum.
And as for having 'my' in *both* the product and company name, all I can say is: "My, oh my, oh my!!!"

Playing in public

[alephnull42]

First impressions:
- There's a technical term for people shaking their things in public. I believe the term is "w*nker" or "exhibitionist"
- Cellphone etiquette has improved a bit at last, and we have grown used to people talking to themselves in public. With this innovation, we can expect guys in suits doing a weird St-Vitus-SHake-that-funky-booty-type dance in restaurants, airports, streets.
- Looking at the problems my father used to have with his self-winding mechanical watch - i.e. Look, shake, hold to ear to see if its ticking, shake swear, hold to ear again, twiddle knob, shake, swear, swear - and this was in a time when people were still able to build GOOD mechanical devices, I cant see this thing lasting very long before it goes on the blink.

"If you wish to speak to an operator, put your hands on your hips, and stick your knees insiiiiiiide"

Re:Playing in public

[trentblase]

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.

iPAQ

[perly-king-69]

When Compaq (RIP) were developing the iPAQ they looked at using a similar method of navigation. I remember reading an article in Linux Journal(?) about playing Doom under Linux controlled by shaking the pda around.

Re:iPAQ

[worthb]

Yes, it was called "Rock 'n' Scroll" and you can read about it here.

Re:iPAQ

[CWCarlson]

...and if you have a Palm device, you can build your own tilt sensor (either as a dongle or installed internally, depending on your model) with the information here.

There's a library for the dongle, a hack to 'map' tilt motions to the hard scroll keys, and a pretty cool game called Mulg (which works even without the sensor).

Re:iPAQ

[domcamus]

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>.

Mirror

[soliaus]

Server is a little sluggish, here are a few mirrors. If link one doesnt work, use link 2, its for my faster pipe.

Mirror One - http://spark.ath.cx/mirror/
Mirror Two - http://decompile.us/mirror/

Jokes aside

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

No more broken keys!!!

[dew-genen-ny]

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.

Motion control = games !! ;)

[ElGanzoLoco]

That "motion control" feature seems quite cool (i RTFA'd)... I can see a lot of games that could make use of this feature.

First example that comes to mind: these little car racing games you find on lots of mobile phones now (or on the GBA, colinMc Rae Rally & such...). One could use the phone itself as a car wheel, tilt it left to turn left, tilt it right to turn right, pull it towards you to brake, push it away from you to accelerate... (Would be cool for flight sims too)

The phone could even "counter-rotate" the image to compensate for the tilting: picture still upright even when you've tilted the device 90 degrees to make a turn. (I'm not sure if I'm being clear enough on this point)
You could also make a simulation of these wood & plastic games, where you had to navigate a metallic ball through a maze, by just tilting the device...

Since games are apparently becoming the next big thing for mobile phones (that, and polyphonic ringtones :( ), myOrigo could have a point there (licence technology to Nokia nGage?)

Remember in 5 years, when myorigo will have outplaced Nintendo & Sony thanks to these features: you heard it here first! ;)

Re:Motion control = games !! ;)

[gummint]

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.

Contra Ref

[241comp]

Of course, to access your speed dial you just use the "special code" - Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right.

Can't resist saying it...

[Vandil X]

This will add a whole new dimension to "phone sex".

Old joke revisited?

[Overzeetop]

So...if you shake it more than three times, does that mean you're playing with it?

Tilting pie menus rock!

[SimHacker]

There's an earlier slashdot article about "Gyroscope Gives CellPhones" 'Tilt Control'". Probably not gyroscopes, but actually MEMS accelerometers.

Pie menus are a naturally efficient way to operate a tilt-sensitive user interface. Scrolling up and down through one-dimensional linear menus with a device that can tilt in any directions is a waste of the device's potential.

Here's a cool research paper from Sony's Computer Science Labs, about "tilting pie menus". I love it! I can't wait till all cell phones can sense tilt. Tilt control rocks!

Tilting Operations for Small Screen Computers
By Jun Rekimoto, Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Inc.
More details: Tilting Operations for Small Screen Interfaces (Tech Note)
HTML version from Google

-Don