Slashdot Mirror
Samsung Launches 3D Movement Recognition Phone
Shuttertalk reports that Samsung have launched the world's first phone equipped with a continuous 3D movement sensor. Movement sensors in mobile phones to date have been limited to slope calculations and applied to some games and bio-related features. The potential is there to do away with the need for complex keypads on mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras and other handheld products. Many functions will be controlled by movement instead of buttons.
*ring ring* Hello! Chen calling. I speak James please! No James here man... Oh! Is this left left right down left right up? What the...
I was just trying to phone my girlfriend...
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Without tactile feedback, waving fingers in the air and making funny gestures to do things is a waste of time and customers will hate it.
You can use your optical mouse without it touching the tabletop too, but it isn't at all a reasonable way to operate it.
But what happens when you're in the middle of a tech support call and you slap your hand on your head....? Does the phone know to hang up at this point?
Let's see ... I can program my phone to only need two keystrokes to get to functions I use the most often, there are nine available but I only have three programmed because that's all I use. All of my most often called numbers are voice enabled, and I don't have to open the phone to take calls on my blue-tooth handset. This new phone lets me can draw numbers in space, althought I cannot imagine that is easier or faster than using the keys. And I can draw 'Y' or 'N' instead of pressing soft keys.
... nothing to see here....unless you are a gadget freak and want to buy something that will no longer be offered in 6 months due to a lack of interest.
From what I can tell, the only purpose of this is for games. And we all know how successful they have been combining phones with game systems.
Move on
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The article says that the "new technology" uses an accelerometer, yet states: "This technology will do away with the need for complex keypads on mobile phones".
Clearly, they are jumping the gun. What about people on bumpy trains, busses, etc? Granted, it might be an easier means of input for people walking or standing, but for people in cars, trains, etc, etc, It won't work, and clearly won't "do away with" a standard "complex" input keypad.
Though, it is kind of cool to see components like accelerometers finding their way into everything. With modern mobile phones, maybe they'll be programmable for use as a bluetooth wireless "air mouse"? One would only hope the spec would be at least open to mainstream programmers.
It's the same thing as the Gyromouse.
:) where you can throw the phone to simulate a dart.... :)
I saw the Philips version of this gyromouse once for the cheap price of 15 dollars and didn't even consider it.
Who wants to keep his hand in the air all the time, apart from the presentation every now and then ?
Every heard of RSI ?
The only nice thing I can think for it is some throwing game (darts
Probably not a very good idea
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Wouldn't this kind of thing be extemely hard to use?
Imagine having to write an SMS by hand in the air, there would be a much greater strain on your muscles, it can't be done in a small space, and it is SLOW.
I mean does anyone here like the idea of going back to writing communications by hand? Or for that matter, shaking the input device to do something that can be done by moving your thumb 3cm?
Man its bad enough that my phone randomly phones people in my pocket when I sit down, let alone when I'm walking along the road..
My phone's autolock doesn't always work so I don't really want to phone australia by mistake cause I just ran up a flight of stairs!
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
Phone: "I noticed your hand waving up and down, would you like me to conect you to a sex-chat hotline"
User: Puts his meat away, and turns phone recognition off.
...or would shaking the phone about to control games make it a tad difficult to follow what's happening on the screen?
Two words: handicapped people. Some people can't type on those classic keypads. Now they can make simple hand gestures to call somebody. For the rest of us, it's just another phone with totally useless features.
To date, movement sensors in mobile phones have been limited to slope calculations and applied to some games and bio-related features. However, the SCH-S310 can recognize continuous movement in 3-dimensional space.
Two technical problems with this that I see.
Accelerometers have accumulation errors that always render them inaccurate. For true accuracy you need an external point of reference.
Consider, your phone senses that it accerates 5 m/s/s for 2 seconds, it can compute its current velocity no problem.
Now in stopping it, sensor error causes it to think it's accerlated -4.9999 m/s/s for 2 seconds. It's stopped, but it thinks it has a nonzero velocity. Not a big deal yet, but over time these errors accumulate, and after a day or two your phone thinks it's cruising along at 500mph. Perhaps a constant decay term on the stored velocity can force the system to tend to zero over the long term.
But a second and bigger issue is that of frame of reference. For many of the applications described here, I don't care how fast my phone is moving with respect to the earth, I care how fast it is moving with respect to me. So if I get in a car in stop and go traffic, how does the phone discriminate that motion from motion I do with my hands? Or what if I'm just walking along trying to edit my phone book with gesture motions and someone steps in front of me and I stop short? bye bye Cindy, guess we won't be going out tonight after all.
Maybe very clever software design can mitigate this problem of discriminating intended from unintended motion, but it's a difficult problem.
1.
User: Hey, look at this!
* User turns around to show friend
User: Bugger. Just a sec.
2.
Executive 1: What if the user is trying to walk and use the phone at the same time? It is, after all, a mobile phone.
Executive 2: Oh yeah, you're right, it's a load of crap isn't it?
Of course, you can't expect the executives to think of problems with their ideas, because that would imply that they were fallible.
~~Every few years or so I'm accidentally fashionable!
i like the idea of a pen phone where you dial a number by writing it down though - good for SMS messages, too...
I can use my stylus on my graphics tablet without touching it (and in fact have to), and it comes quite naturally because I'm used to hovering a pen above a page. This is simply a case of what you're used to, you're not used to hovering a big heavy optical mouse over the desk, and you're not used to waving your hands arround to make phone calls.
You have a celphone with a Digital Camera, GPS, a 3D motion sensor, Bluetooth, a two-way radio, and a processor to handle all this plus some dumb games. That's just some shielding and fancy coding away from a guidance system, with optical target recognition, GPS, a backup Inertial Navigation System for areas where GPS is not available, celestial navigation system (just roll the camera over), and short- and medium- range radios. Put two on a drone and you'll get basic flight instruments as well. Now UAVs, Cruise Missiles, and Drug-smuggling drones are in the hands of anyone with a Verizon subscription!
I have absolutely no experience with accelerometers, so here goes my n00b question for today:
;D
Would it be possible for the phone's software to adjust the sensitivity of the hardware? Or just interpret it different? As in, would it be possible that, when first used, the telephone would ask you how much 'strength' or acceleration is needed for the activation of this feature? Doesn't seem to difficult to me, and would solve some of the more obvious problems, IMHO.
Not that I would have ANY use for this.
PS. I have the feeling this kind of interface to a telephone could cause a lot of mis-communication between people
- XoloX
Samsung is ahead of their competitors in many areas. Although this may not be a huge selling point at the moment, in the future it might. Their edge will be that they will have experince of producing phones with this tech when their competitor won't.
One application I immediatly think of is navigation of maps. Just move the screen over your virtual map instead of slowly scrolling around with softbuttons, or whatever conventional method there might be on your current phone.
So now all those somatic components I memorised in spells will have a use.
Not a sentence!
There was a game for gameboy color IIRC called "Kirby Tilt 'n Tumble" which used this technology, been out for several years, kind of an interesting game, mostly just for the "gee-wiz" factor though.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
What are these "Cell phones" you speak of? No seriously...I think all cell phones are the most useless invention ever invented, come on, we read /. , who would ever want to speak to us? I get maybe 1 phone call a month on my real phone, and that's usually a telemarketer. Definitely nothing to see here..
Now, even the retarded kids will have someone to clown!
sincerely,
[Zorro]
Smile.
So now the crazy guy on the subway waving his arms around and talking to himself, is only just trying out his new phone?
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
In the US? How about a link? I've never seen it, but would probably trade my current phone for one with REAL WORKING voice recognition...