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Handhelds Hardware

Motion-sensitive Handhelds? 137

Posted by michael from the shaken-not-stirred dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Fancy controlling your mobile phone just by moving it? This article on ZDNet describes a new smartphone that is motion sensitive, so users can zoom into a Web page, scroll round a document or switch from portrait view to landscape simply by tilting the handset." The company website has a little more information.
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Motion-sensitive Handhelds? More

Motion-sensitive Handhelds?

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  • Sure, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by haystor ( 102186 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @01:59PM (#6313576)
    The major problem is having to drop it every time you want to click on something.

  • great (Score:4, Funny)

    by Boromir son of Faram ( 645464 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:00PM (#6313587) Homepage
    Just when I get used to people walking down the street apparently talking to themselves. Now I'm going to be dodging fists when they dial.

  • Lets see (Score:3, Funny)

    by HowlinMad ( 220943 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:00PM (#6313589) Homepage Journal
    switch from portrait view to landscape simply by tilting the handset

    Would that happen to be a 90 degree tilt?
    • switch from portrait view to landscape simply by tilting the handset

      Would that happen to be a 90 degree tilt?

      The real question is, how will you look at it.

      You tilt it to view it in landscape, then move it back to view it, and it returns to portrait.
    • Whats the difference between portrait and landscape on a square screen, like my Palm integrated phone?

    • Re:Lets see (Score:3, Insightful)

      by swordboy ( 472941 )
      What I want to see is a marble/labyrinth game for cell phones. Wouldn't *that* be something?
  • Great now I can dial numbers by drawing 3 foot numbers in the air. If I don't get arrested first for breaking people's noses or get thrown into the Funny Farm, again... (Just Kidding)
  • "Fancy controlling your mobile phone just by moving it? This article on ZDNet describes a new smartphone that is motion sensitive, so users can zoom into a Web page, scroll round a document or switch from portrait view to landscape simply by tilting the handset."

    This will work wonderfully while I'm walking!
  • Doesn't matter really, Why can't we have technology continue to shrink and yet keep useful and functional interfaces. I don't want a thumb keyboard, I want a device with a full size keyboard that I can stuff in my pocket.
    Although I do like the orientation thing, where it doesn't matter where I am, it discerns and rotates. I think more important than using a phone as a lens, is figuring out how to have 1024x768 at 17 inches fit in my pocket.

  • Not bad.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Darken_Everseek ( 681296 )
    At first I had visions of people not being able to hold a view they actually wanted; but since there's a button you have to press to access each of these features, I like the idea. Probably works based from an electronic gyroscope of some sort .. cool.

  • 'Motion-sensitive Handhelds' (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh, the joke potential with that term...

  • Suddenly (Score:3, Funny)

    by Davak ( 526912 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:02PM (#6313606) Homepage
    All the porn companies are adopting this technology for their web pages.

    Move the phone up...
    Move the phone down...
    Move the phone up...

    Suddenly your cell has hair growing from it.

    Davak
    • >> All the porn companies are adopting this technology for their web pages.

      Think about it when they integrate "force-feeback" into these little things.
    • All the porn companies are adopting this technology for their web pages.
      Move the phone up...
      Move the phone down...
      Move the phone up...
      Good thing motion sickness is covered in my handheld's warranty :)

  • Tilt sensitive Mobile Phones? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SkArcher ( 676201 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:02PM (#6313611) Journal
    Now I need to program a game for one of these in the style of one of those old 'ball bearing maze' puzzles you used to get in christmas crackers when I was a kid.

    Damn you /.

    I wonder how accurate and sensitive the tile function is?

  • NOOOoooo Daddy... (Score:4, Funny)

    by PSaltyDS ( 467134 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:05PM (#6313630) Journal
    I wasn't hitting my sister in the head... I was trying to call mommy!

    Works as a shutter release for the phone-cam too, but you always seem to get blurry pictures... hmmm...

    I may not be funny, but at least I'm... well, not not funny...

  • Itsy bitsy Itsy had it first (Score:3, Informative)

    by lophophore ( 4087 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:05PM (#6313636) Homepage
    Hmmm.. This is news? Didn't this feature first appear in the DEC Itsy? About 5 years ago?

  • Great... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And then, in the name of convenience, they'll make it so X shakes activates speed dial only to find out stories like this [yahoo.com] become more and more common.

  • I'll pass (Score:5, Funny)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:06PM (#6313640)
    Combine tilting web navigation, with smart phones that know your buying habits (and credit card info).

    Drop it on the carpet. Pick it up and find out that you just ordered and paid for, a battleship anchor, express delivery to your house.

    • Re:I'll pass (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Combine tilting web navigation, with smart phones that know your buying habits (and credit card info).

      Drop it on the carpet. Pick it up and find out that you just ordered and paid for, a battleship anchor, express delivery to your house.

      What are your buying habits.
    • Pick it up and find out that you just ordered and paid for, a battleship anchor, express delivery to your house.

      So you're the prick who outbid me on e-Bay!
    • Battleship anchor? I've already got one of those. Except it's labeled DEC VAX 6000-510...

  • Hey, stop moving it! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Asprin ( 545477 )

    **That's** gonna make browsing pr0n a little more difficult...

  • already have this on my Zaurus (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:06PM (#6313648)
    I discovered that by dropping my Z from a height of about 6 feet onto concrete, I was able to turn off the power. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to turn it back on again. :-(

  • You know, it just might work (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was trying to think of all the potential problems with *unintentional* motions with this device for a troll post, but I read this quote

    Motion control can also be used to scroll around and zoom in and out of an application. With the mirror button pushed down, the user can see different parts of the document or Web page by tilting the handset. MyOrigo compares this technique to that of moving a mirror around to see different areas of your face. A zoom button also works on the same principle.

    So they've a
  • Is the phone supposed to shut off (or display a BSOD) when shown the Finger?
  • MyDevice uses haptic feedback as a way of improving the experience of using the touchscreen. This means that the screen vibrates slightly every time the user presses it, which MyOrigo says makes it easier to type.

    Has anyone else done that? That seems like a bigger improvement to me than the tilting interface. I remember when those fingerboard keyboards and some other flat panel device (don't recall the name) came out. The only thing that stopped me from adopting stuff like that was the no feedback when yo

  • Heck, with my reception (Score:5, Funny)

    by boskone ( 234014 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:09PM (#6313676)
    "Fancy controlling your mobile phone just by moving it?"

    I have this feature now, it's called "poor coverage" and the way I hold the phone affects whether I can make calls or not.
    • Indeed, nothing new here. I've been moving my phone around at all sorts of different angles, trying to control the reception, for years. It seems only natural that they would expand this "feature" to also manipulate the screen.
    • I believe this bad reception is much like the dance of the G4 titanium user when attempting to find wireless coverage. If you caught the WWDC keynote or have it available, check out the beginning before they turned the wireless points on. Its quite amusing to watch a room full of the MEGAGEEKs do the wave.
      -pale
  • Now when I drop my PDA it'll crash the system ):

  • Old palms made this easy (Score:4, Informative)

    by msheppard ( 150231 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:11PM (#6313702) Homepage Journal
    The BOSPDAUG (Boston PDA User's Group) has been putting accelermeters in palms for a while now. There was a brief project to put two of them in to get full motion... and then invent a new form of entering text with hand motions.

    The best part was the name: "Physical Graffiti"

    M@
  • ...I had a dream that I was walking down the street and playing a new kind of interactive game. I had a game console that looked similar to the older Game Boy Advance (with the screen in the middle and my hands on either side.) As I moved the screen up and down and side to side, I was able to see different parts of the larger "view" (sort of like looking at a 60" TV 4 inches at a time.) Various gestures I made (flipping my wrist a specific way; tilting the console) corresponded to killing enemies on the scr
  • Something much simpler than this. I just need a cellphone that has some kind of motion sensor and can detect I put it down in a table for a while. This would allow the phone to automatically change its mode from vibrator to audible alarm.

    As it is right now, I almost never switch the phone to vibrator as I'm sure I'll forget to switch it back to audible when I get home...

  • Cool stuff (Score:2, Informative)

    by rtstyk ( 545241 )
    This is really nice. I'm glad to see someone thinking out there. The zoom in animation on the company website gives really good idea of the potential to this thing.

    I do agree though with a comment about looking silly while doing that but then again, we did get used to people apparently talking to themselves so why not this too?
  • someone to ask about linux. :)

    Ok, so what does it run?

  • Background (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    FYI:

    Myorigo isn't just 'some company'. It's part of the same concern (Microcell) that made Sony-Ericssons' latest multimedia mobilephones.
  • I don't understand why they passed up the opportunity to position their device on the formidable coattails of similar established products...

    "Following in the time-honored tradition of the breakthrough Kirby's Tilt 'n' Tumble'..."

  • awesome gaming potential (Score:4, Interesting)

    by donutz ( 195717 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:15PM (#6313740) Homepage Journal
    Motion sensitive computing input devices of any kind make for some awesome gaming potential.

    In this case, you could have a wicked game of labyrinth running on your PDA!
  • I saw something like this at PC Expo in New York a few years ago. It was a modular device that could be attached to a model of Palm handheld.

    It was great: they demoed using a map and playing a game with it.

    The company's website: http://www.motionsense.com/ [motionsense.com]

  • like the Itsy Rock 'n' Scroll [compaq.com]? There are many other instances of this idea. It's surprising that commercial systems aren't using it that much.

    Maybe if someone produced a SD or CF tilt and motion sensor, this would catch on a bit more.
  • As if there aren't enough problems with driver-assholes talking on the phone while crusing about. Now we have to worry about them tilting/paying attention to the phone, and veering off the road and into a ditch, or the rest of us. Preferably a ditch. I've been hit by enough cellular drivers. :-\
    • The tilt feature would make the PDAs completely useless while driving on Michigan's moon-crater-surface roadways.

      It might work better in states without such extreme freeze/thaw cycles though.
  • What a lame ass gimmick.

    Sorry, but it's a lame ass gimmick. It's halfway cute in a gameboy game. A lame gimmick for anything else.

    So to scroll up, I tilt the handheld so that I'm outside of the screens viewing angle. Uh huh. And all because cursor keys / direction pads / styluses are hard hard hard to use.

  • hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kadagan AU ( 638260 ) <kadaganNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:26PM (#6313831) Journal
    A new smartphone from Finland lets users scroll and zoom simply by using their hands

    Seems that I can do that with my *old* phone... just use my hands to push the scroll button!!

    Seriously though, you have to push a button corresponding to the motion you're about to do if you want it to recognize the motion (assuming I understood the article). Now if you have to push the button anyway, why bother moving the phone? Just to look cool? I mean, you're already pushing a button, why not just make it the scroll of zoom button?

  • Not good. (Score:4, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@yahoo. c o m> on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:28PM (#6313845) Journal
    What if I'm Katherine Hepburn? Huh? What then?

    I'm looking at who I want to call, then suddenly I'm connected to some operator in Thailand. I try to hang up, but now I've ordered a pizza. I attempt to cancel the order, and great! I've just booked a flight to Squarenuts, Missouri.

    Combine this with pre-emptive ordering, and I am a bankrupt movie star. I might even lose my house on Golden Pond.

    I think not.

    • In that case, you'd be in Howard Stern's celebrity death pool and therefore most likely not in the target market. ;)
  • The motion control and the vibration will probably eat up your batteries like crazy.
  • This should be GREAT for train/car rides!!

  • Simulate Bigger Screen (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mignon ( 34109 ) <satan@programmer.net> on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:34PM (#6313897)
    I have an idea for using one of these phones to simulate a much bigger screen. Use this virtual deskspace to create a grid of, say 640x480 cells, with the initial cell at the top left.

    Then, holding your phone at arms length, wave your arm from left to right. When you hit the 640th virtual cell, quickly move the phone back to the left and down one cell. Repeat until you get to the end of the bottom row, when you return to the top row. Oh, and do all that in about 1/60 second for a flicker-free experience.

    I won't even patent this, so it's in the public domain.

  • Wow. (Score:2)

    by drivers ( 45076 )
    That's so amazing. I so amazed. Look at me. This is me being amazed. This is so useful. You can do... stuff... with it. Finally the killer feature we've all been waiting for. I'm so glad this feature is available now. Cell phones need more features like this. This will revolutionize the communications paradigm.

    (not!)
  • So I lend my phone to my female co-worker and as she tosses her hair back to use the phone, all my porn comes on the screen ....great, just great.
  • I drop it, and it shuts off. For a long, long time.

  • Should be about as easy to use... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tbase ( 666607 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @02:41PM (#6313937)
    ...as one of those games where you try and get the ball through the maze and in the hole.

    "Honestly occifer, I'm not drunk, I was just dialing the FOP to make a donation"
  • Motion-sensitive Handhelds?

    Does it come with free Dramamine?

  • I can see it now. You trip on the subway and your PDA clicks on the nameless popup and the entire screen is taken over by Asian Porn.

    Honey--really, I didn't MEAN to click on that!

    Maybe we need more INTENTIONAL forms of input...
  • ...bendable interfaces [newscientist.com]
    Otherwise we will all be standing around shaking our phones like cans of spray paint to scroll through selection menus. That will look silly, although in Japan they will probably make popular dance games for cell phones(mobile maraca madness?). Accelerometer controls are cool, unless you're like most Americans who go offroading every day in their giant SUVs on the way to the office.
  • To switch from a portrait view to a landscape view, the user just rotates the handset by 90 degrees.
    I tried the exact opposite with my computer monitor. It works! Granted thats a little less complicated with a handheld. So I did a test: I took a regular photo, rotated it 90 degrees, and shazaaam! Instant landscape view!
  • I tried to use mine when I had a case of the hiccups, and wound up on this great pr0n website. Now I can't figure out how to get back there. :(
  • User1: Hey, I can't quite make out that text, can you zoom in?

    User 2: Sure! *tilts phone*

    User 1: I can't read the LCD at that angle - can you point it towards me again?

    User 2: Sure! *tilts phone back*

    User1: Hey, I can't quite make out that text, can you zoom in?
  • It senses when I cause motion in the buttons, when my voice causes motion of air molecules, and when RF energy causes motion of electrons.

    What?

  • I guess I'll throw away the new phone I just got. It works fine, but I can't live with out this thing. It'll be my fourth phone in three months but they just keep coming up with so many essential innovations that I must have. I am a robot.

  • "mood sensitive"?? When I hold my wife's hand, I want to know what her mood is... before I experience the "sound of one hand clapping".
  • Why can you only control the pda with your right hand?
  • Now, in addition to seemingly talking to themselves in public (tiny headsets), cell phone users will also wildly gesticulate in the air, finally making them indistinguishable from the homeless residents of Seattle's streets.
  • Please smash the pad with your fist now.

  • This has been done with the PalmIII series, some time ago. There's even a MULG version that uses the mod :-) Here's a link to the project page: http://www.harbaum.org/till/palm/adxl202/
  • From The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

    The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch sensitive -- you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still

    • This was exactly my first reaction too when I saw this story.

      Another relevant quote, from my taglines file (sadly without an attribution):

      As the boffins sit in their labratories devising ever more ingenious new gadgets, the one question they consistently fail to ask themselves is "so what?".
  • I just know (in the way that you know these things just have to happen) that I'm going to have to make a phone call while hanging upside-down, and the damn thing will just explode, because the QA guys are thinking "who could possible need to make a call hanging upside-down?". Damn corner-cases.
  • I tried a gyro mouse in a car and that lasted nearly 10 seconds... damn thing thought I was constantly moving it forward.

    If this uses gyros for stabilization I'd hate to see it on an airplane, subway, bus, car, etc.

    if it's using mercury swiches then cool, but bumpy roads will suck something fierce... not to mention the tree-huggers complaining about mercury use.

    sadly something cool like this is probably going to go the way of the 3d-joystick (which I stopped using on my Commodore 64 nearly 15 years ago.)
    • I tried a gyro mouse in a car and that lasted nearly 10 seconds... damn thing thought I was constantly moving it forward.

      Wait, wouldn't this only be the case when the car is accelerating/slowing? The car accelerates you and the mouse in your hand relative to the road, simply speaking. Once you travel at a constant speed no force it applied to the mouse except for graviation, right? Let's say I stand in a bus and drop a ball. The ball will not travel to the back of the bus while in the air since its forwa
      • I didn't like the idea of maintaining a set speed just to click on an icon... I'm guessing the guy in front of me in traffic wouldn't either.

        and to calibrate you had to turn the computer on at the exact speed you would be operating at.

        not to mention I don't know any public transportation that maintains a constant speed (except for that bus in the movies), especially for one geek with a palm pilot.
  • now, combine motion sensitivity with the pointing technology mentioned a few days back (why can I never find these things again?) and a camera, and you get augmented reality.

    nice combination.

  • tried it out (Score:2, Informative)

    by tengwar ( 600847 )
    I've played with one of these for a couple of minutes. It was a prototype, so it didn't have a full software load, but I tried everything that's referred to in the article. The screen is a little larger than that of a P800, but is flush with the surface rather than recessed, and seems to be of higher resolution. I was using a web browser: the effect is that you have a full-sized virtual screen (perhaps laptop sized) and you're moving a letterbox around the virtual screen by tilting the device. The response

  • A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive --- you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It sav

  • The Ph.D student at UC Berkeley has already done this. There was a story on him on Slashdot a coulple months ago. "handhelds with virtual windows". http://buffy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ResearchSummary/03 a bstracts/pingster.1.html http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/022603/Handheld s_gain_space_022603.html There was even several movies of him demonstrating his invention. His name is Ka ping Yee. I remembered he used optical tracking for 3-D precision. This isn't news to me. It has been around for a year. Anth
  • The Ph.D student at UC Berkeley has already done this. There was a story on him on Slashdot a coulple months ago. "handhelds with virtual windows".

    http://buffy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ResearchSummary/ 0 3a bstracts/pingster.1.html

    http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/022603/Handhe ld s_gain_space_022603.html

    There was even several movies of him demonstrating his invention. His name is Ka ping Yee. I remembered he used optical tracking for 3-D precision. This isn't news to me. It has been around for a year.

    Anthony

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