This is interesting. Samsung’s soon-to-be-released flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S IV will apparently know where to scroll by tracking your eye movements.
The New York Times’ Bits Blog cites a Samsung employee who spoke on condition of anonymity and said the phone will, for instance, know to scroll to the next page once your eyes hit the bottom of the current page.
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At this stage, it’s unclear exactly what eye-tracking technology the device will be using, he did say that the software features of the new phone would outweigh the hardware.
In January, Samsung reportedly filed for an “Eye Scroll” trademark in Europe, before filing a similar one in the US in February. The latter describes the feature as “Computer application software having a feature of sensing eye movements and scrolling displays of mobile devices, namely, mobile phones, smartphones and tablet computers according to eye movements; digital cameras; mobile telephones; smartphones; tablet computers.”
It also apparently filed for the trademark “Eye Pause”, although there was no description of what that does.
In an interview, Samsung’s chief product officer Kevin Packingham, disagreed that the device’s software would outweigh its hardware capabilities. “It’s an amazing phone,” he told bits.
If the eye-tracking technology all sounds a little bit sci-fi, it’s worth bearing in mind that S III already knows when you’re looking it, using the front camera to know how long to keep the screen lit up.
Whatever happens, we can’t wait to see what Samsung’s got up its sleeve come 14 March.
