Is the Bar of Soap Tomorrow's Smarterphone?

Barence writes "Researchers at MIT have developed a gadget that knows whether you want to use it as a camera or smartphone, just by the way you're holding it. So, if you hold the device, dubbed the Bar of Soap, out in front of you like a camera it will automatically bring up an LCD viewfinder. However, if you then switch to holding it as you would a mobile phone, it will bring up a touchscreen keypad instead. The Bar of Soap utilises a three-axis accelerometer and 72 surface sensors to track the position of the user's fingers and its position."

Comments

Great

[clarkkent09]

I look forward to the day when I wont have to face the arduous task of pressing the camera button when I want to switch to camera mode. And I am sure I won't look like an idiot twisting and shaking my phone back and forth, trying to get the damn camera on (like with iPhone switching portrait/lansdcape mode) because the feature will work flawlessly every time. Sorry, I tend to be in a sarcastic mood early in the morning. Yes, I know it's 1pm.

Re:Great

[NonUniqueNickname]

At least you won't have to twist and shake like an idiot for very long. Newer camera-phones enter camera mode pretty fast, less than 10 seconds.

Re:Great

[Mozk]

I know people with bad vision who hold out their phone in much the same way as I imagine one would to switch to camera mode in this device, so I could see problems with this. Honestly it's not that hard to push a button, and a lot of phones have a dedicated button to bring up the camera interface.

Re:Great

[Cillian]

And I wonder how much all this extra tech/sensors adds to the price...... Personally, I'll go for the switch and keep the cash. I mean, sure, shiny stuff is cool, but if that's the best they can think of to do with the tech... *sigh*

Re:Great

[cayenne8]

Hmm...sounds like a PITA.

Have they never seen anyone lay down while they talk on the phone. I'd be pissed if I was laying down, heard the phone ring, picked it up, and when I said hello, I heard the fscking thing taking pictures of my ear.....

Re:Great

[Locke2005]

I am sure I won't look like an idiot Hey, you already look like a schizophrenic when you walk down the street talking loudly into the bluetooth headset that nobody can see... how can you possibly look any worse twisting your phone around when you want to take a picture? Perhaps the cell phone manufacturers are just trying to avoid being mandated to produce a loud "shutter" noise every time you snap a digital pic -- a feature I'm sure people that take snaps of animals will absolutely love.

Re:Great

[dns_server]

i have heard that accelerometors are only about $2-3 in volume so they are cheap.

Re:Great

[davester666]

Which translates into $20-$30 dollars added to the retail price of the phone...

Re:Great

[camperdave]

i have heard that accelerometors are only about $2-3 in volume so they are cheap.

So, only about a thousand times as expensive as a switch, then?

Re:Great

[nautsch]

Hmm. I still hope, that people will get that megapixels are NOT an indicator for the quality of the picture.

Re:Great

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

laf. from the article:

Unfortunately, the disparate demands of the individual interfaces has remained a barrier to complete convergence.

yes its shocking that the interfaces of camera and phone have not suddenly become identical simply because of the possibility to sell them in the same enclosure. *gasp*

Re:Great

[againjj]

To bolster your comment, I note that they state that there is only a 70% accuracy (at this time) which goes to 90% if it is trained to a specific user. Not exactly very reliable.

Re:Great

[PuckSR]

I agree...

Have you heard about the new computer interface devices called "mice"? They try to interface with a computer via movement of the device across a flat surface rather than just typing in a command. Absolutely useless, and I bet they don't work worth a crap

"There is no evidence that people want to use these things."--John Dvorak(discussing the computer mouse)

Useless and silly technology!

Re:Great

[Pentium100]

Megapixels are an indicator of quality, just not the main or single one.

The quality of the lens and sensor, also the size of the sensor also matters as much as (or more than) the megapixel count, but still, if a camera had a perfect lens and a 75mm sensor, but a resolution of only 320x240, it may actually do worse than a cameraphone with it's tiny sensor and a below average lens but 5mpx... Shooting in low light would be a different matter...

Re:Great

[Chris Burke]

(like with iPhone switching portrait/lansdcape mode)

One of my first experiences with an iPhone was a coworker trying to show me a picture of their son. They'd taken the picture with a different camera, held sideways, so it showed up sideways on the screen. So he rotated the phone. And the iPhone obliged by rotating the picture 90 degrees so that his kid was still sideways.

Needless to say, I was deeply impressed. ;)

Re:Great

[he-sk]

Broadening the focus on technical properties other than megapixel still misses the point that people take pictures and not cameras. The fact is that no technical property is a good indicator of the quality of a picture, because technology improves and changes all the time. Restricting yourself to an old and/or lofi camera can be lots of fun and that's the real challenge: making good pics with any camera.

Re:Great

[zippthorne]

And net profit!

Re:Great

[Pentium100]

That is true, but sometimes (at least I) take photos that would have no "artistic" value, but only for informational purposes, for example taking a photo of a page of text (using a phone as a scanner), the requirement here is that the text is readable, which depends a lot on technical properties of the phone (one phone I had couldn't take a clear picture of text, either the page is too close (out of focus) or it is too far away (too few pixels per character)).

And yes, a cameraphone will never be as good as a DSLR camera, but I have trouble putting a DSLR camera in my pocket... Also video cameras with photo capability are better than phones, for example my Handycam DCR-HC90E takes 3mpx photos that are way better than the 3mpx photos my Nokia N93 takes. On the other hand the N93 fits in my pocket, while the Handycam does not.

Better

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bar of Soap utilises a three-axis accelerometer and 72 surface sensors to track the position of the user's fingers and its position."

And what's the advantage over using a single "surface sensor" (i.e. a button)?

what if?

[sl0ppy]

what if i want to take a picture of something in front of me, on my desk, while i am sitting down. i've actually done this a few times, so it's not too much to ask.

hopefully there will be an easy override button i can press?

sometimes gadgets try too hard to be "smart", and end up infuriating the end users.

Re:what if?

[hobbit]

Quite. Not to mention that if you ask a teenager to mime "taking a picture", they'll probably mime holding an object in portrait orientation and pressing a button on the side nearest them. Whereas twenty/thirtysomethings will probably mime pressing a button on the top of something in landscape orientation, and forty-and-up-somethings will probably mime holding something up to their eye.

Joy

[illegalcortex]

Please god, no. I already curse my iPod Touch frequently enough when it decides how to rotate the screen for me. For example, ever try web surfing while lying down? What I wouldn't give for a "lock screen orientation" button.

Re:Joy

[Shakrai]

What I wouldn't give for a "lock screen orientation" button.

If you needed such a button then Steve Jobs would have provided it for you. Clearly you aren't using your iPod in the correct manner ;)

Too smart phone

[nizo]

No matter how smart this phone is, you still shouldn't drop it in the shower.

Oblig. tag

[Eudial]

Why isn't this tagged "dontdropthesoap"?!

And what about...

[thesolo]

If you want or need to take a picture/video discreetly? Now you're stuck holding it way out in front of you, giving away the fact that you're filming/taking photos?

I've snapped photos and video before by keeping the phone up against my ear like I was on the phone, but aiming the lens at the subject and tapping the button on the side of the phone. I know other people have done the same to film their local police using a taser on someone. If the cops know you're filming, they're likely to try to take your cell.

Potential for fail...

[reality-bytes]

Okay, so not epic fail, but a bit of a potential fail if they manage to come up with yet another phone which despite having a really cool feature where it can change modes just due to it's orientation.... it still takes a bloody eternity to switch modes.

Perhaps I'm the only one. Perhaps everybody else's phone can go from dial-a-pizza to 6-gigapixel with motion-stabilisation in 0.001 seconds but every handset I've tried has something between an annoying and an interminable wait before the thing actually starts functioning like something approximating a camera.

If I really cared about taking reasonable quality photos on the spur of the moment, I think I'd still carry a dedicated digital camera.

Finding Reception

[Maladius]

I'm definitely foreseeing a problem when you hold the phone out in front of you and move it around to try and find reception. That's a very similar position to the one you would use for picture taking.

Kids don't want to hold a phone like a camera.

[pavon]

My younger brother got a new touchscreen phone the other day and was complaining about how the camera button was in a horrible spot, and was hard to use without pressing other buttons. I picked it up and held it sideways like a camera and none of my fingers came close to touching any buttons, except for the camera button that was under my right index finger right where the shutter button should be.

Me: Seems fine to me.
Him: Why would anyone want to hold it like *that*?

I still can't convince him to to not hold it like you would when taking a picture with a flip-phone.

Best ever design

[know1]

Sony cybershot. Pull the lense cover down, goes into camera mode, with a button wierd you would expect it. Web browsing screen orientation is changed only by user demand - press asterisk to switch. I'm posting this comment from it now. Best ever.

Most of the newer smartphones can do that already.

[zullnero]

Quite a few that are in production or are set to be released utilize almost the exact same technology to reorient their screens and do a whole lot of other things. It doesn't take much to use that same accelerometers to do the exact same things that the article is talking about. The reason a lot of companies haven't gone quite as far as these researchers have is because enabling that by default is kind of a nuisance in practice. But it wouldn't be a bad option for some if they were used to it and wanted to minimize button/tapping/navigational interaction.

I can see this one coming...

[limekiller4]

ZzZzz...

ring
ring

*yawn. [fumble for cell on nightstand.] "Hello?"

*snap snap snap

"What the...??" [pressing "send" by accident]

Now naked pics of my wife are all over the internets. Great.