New phones sense your gaze and can see your fingers before actually touching them

I recently upgraded my phone to a Samsung Galaxy S4.

Upon doing so I noticed a few somewhat unsettling "features" my phone is equipped with.

First, it tracks your head movements to turn off video if you're not looking at your phone. Most likely this is tracked from the camera, since a person's head would most likely be at least a foot away from the screen.

Next, it will mute media if you place your palm over the screen, an option I learned about from the phone, which is kind of cool if you're watching something and get interrupted, and want to silence it easily.

But the most creepy part is next...

Finger Hovering. It knows where your finger is over the screen. Not over the camera, I've blocked the camera lens with my other hand while hovering my finger over every part of the screen at varying distances, and it can still track it perfectly.

The screen of the phone can actually SEE what is in the physical space in front of it.

It is not known how far out it can sense, if it can create a three dimensional model of the room it is in, or if it can be activated remotely by apps or pre-installed software for other purposes.

If you simply think about how to extend the technology even a little you can easily see how these would be valid concerns.

Samsung didn't explain the hard tech behind these interesting new features...

Zero contact: Galaxy S 4 senses your gaze and hovering finger

If it all sounds a little creepy, don't worry, you can turn it off in the phone's settings.

Oh, never mind, it's all good. You can just turn it off... lol

reply to post by Operations


But is not still watching you?

Yeah, the "hovering" technology was introduced last year on the Galaxy Note 2 (which I have) using the S-Pen (stylus). The Galaxy S4 just uses your finger instead of the stylus. All the screen does is sense the electrical field from your finger, which means your finger has to be somewhat close to the screen.

reply to post by Wide-Eyes


That's what you're supposed to believe.

reply to post by _BoneZ_


That doesn't explain the face movement though. It can't be that sensitive?

reply to post by _BoneZ_


I'm sure "sensing electric fields" couldn't possibly be extended by any means whatsoever, right? Maybe it used echolocation to create a 3d model of the room it's in, like a bat? Or maybe both? Or a combination of several technologies...

Echolocation

reply to post by Wide-Eyes


That's the question. What can it see and how well can it see it? It seems like it has several ways to sense the environment around it. That seems to indicate that a combination of those could be used to gather a great deal more information that it leads us to believe.

just add..

I have the galaxy note 2.
I don't use the auto eye thing at all.I purposely didn't get the S4 because of all the hand movement features.not so much because of fears of anything, but it occurs when you're trying to do something else.
I LOVE my Note.it's awesome.

Originally posted by PtolemyII
I have the galaxy note 2.
I don't use the auto eye thing at all.I purposely didn't get the S4 because of all the hand movement features.not so much because of fears of anything, but it occurs when you're trying to do something else.
I LOVE my Note.it's awesome.

There is an option to turn off all hand features and things like that, which I did as soon as I got it. I don't want to be talking to someone on speakerphone while doing something and have it try to interpret my nearby hand movements by mistake. It also has an auto-dial feature based on hand or eye movements, which I don't like the thought of and turned off. It seemed like most of the "cool" new features I didn't find desirable.

Originally posted by Wide-Eyes
That doesn't explain the face movement though. It can't be that sensitive?

No, the face movement is controlled by the front-facing camera. All of this is explained and demonstrated in videos all over the net, including YouTube.

why is any of that creepy or unknown to you considering it was one of the things they covered on the release party, the commercials with the guy in the airport or pretty much any marketing for it?

I still use an 10 year old motorola phone, well hardly use it to be exact, it is basic and PAYG, mobiles have never interested me, all these so-called fancy pants things coming out now, as Shania Twain says "that don't impress me much", do you really need them. We might WANT one, but we do not NEED them. Simplest thing to do is stop falling for the latest hype on the latest gadgets, we got on with our lives quite happily before the invention of mobiles and all these Blueberries, sorry Blackberries. Why are people like sheep and follow the next person just to feel with-it?
Stop buying all this crap, YOU DO NOT NEED IT!

soon it will be just a microchip implant.

opethPA
why is any of that creepy or unknown to you considering it was one of the things they covered on the release party, the commercials with the guy in the airport or pretty much any marketing for it?

Being in marketing all I can say is that is the side they want you to know. There may be possibilities that exist with these features that they don't want you to know, at least not yet.

The simple fact persists that we don't know the full capabilities of these new features. There is nothing in their press releases or demos that explains the limitations of their "new features".

Do you know what the physical, mechanical, and operating system limitations are?

We don't.

There are always ways to do massively disruptive things to computer systems that are interlinked. No way around that reality. The only way to stop it is to try to patch the holes, and definitely don't tell people about all the vulnerabilities.

Gimicky features that I honestly don't need. Now the fingerprint scanner for the new iPhone might come in handy. My GF has an HTC OneX and it uses facial recognition to unlock the phone. It's pointless because I can hold up a photo of her face and it'll unlock.

Just like PC's, Android phones cram tons of features that aren't needed. These usually drain power (unless you know how to disable them) and can conflict with other phone software.

Oh the other side, Siri is the dumbest feature I've seen Apple do. Who wants to look like an idiot in public talking to some AI that can't do anything useful except search the web.

Well, there's some very simple ways of testing the range on it, as simple as seeing how far away your finger can be in order for it to sense the movement, and if gets confused by multiple fingers near it.

Also, while I do get your concerns, the "Dark Knight" batman style echolocation would require some pretty powerful vibrations, and likely other electronic signal to work. Even if you couldn't hear it, you'd darn well feel your phone vibrate that hard, not to mention on most phones that would drain the battery at a very high rate of speed to support a function like that.

A few generations of tech from now? Maybe. But I am highly skeptical that your phone can be used in this manner.

But, and I do mean this seriously, if you are worried about it: Root the phone, and load a custom ROM. Maybe just go with the stock Google Android one.

MystikMushroom
Just like PC's, Android phones cram tons of features that aren't needed. These usually drain power (unless you know how to disable them) and can conflict with other phone software.

Not to be nitpicky but it's not Android (Google) itself that adds them, that is software added by the providers they sell to.

Get your phone direct from Google, or root and install a custom/stripped down ROM or disable the features. It's not hard to do for your slightly above average computer users - and there are lots of tutorials.

Should you need to go through that much effort? Eh, IMO no. But for the companies looking for the edge to sell, and for a lot of their average consumers, these features are part of what they use to decide what phone to get.

And to think the things we have now in 10 or 15 years are going to seem old fashioned. People nowadays walking down the street staring at their mobiles seem modern these days but modern is a shifty thing and it's always changing.

We went from keyboards to the mouse to touch screen mobile devices to.... what next?

Went from mainframe terminals to personal computers to interpersonal computing to... what next?

Software is getting smarter. I wonder how that'll change things? There's software now that can identify objects in a picture. There's software that can identify handwriting.

Machines do work for us. Comptuers are increasingly thinking for us.