Samsung Unveils Motion-Sensitive Mobile Phone

A new phone from Samsung Electronics has the ability to recognize and respond to the motion of its user, opening the door to a host of new mobile phone features.

The SCH-S310, to be released in Korea in March, allows callers to perform such functions as speed-dial by gesture, such as "writing" a number in the air with the phone.

Shaking the phone twice ends the call or deletes spam messages.

O Means Yes, X Means No

The phone also understands an "O" for yes and "X" for no, as the user draws these figures in the air with the phone. Moving the phone sharply to the right when using the MP3 player will play the next song in the user's list; moving it to the left will select the previous tune.

"This is characteristic of the types of enhancements you're going to see made to cell phones going forward," John Jackson, senior analyst, Yankee Group, told TechNewsWorld. "It's designed to beget innovation and beget development; it's an enabling technology. What it enables is going to be up to consumers and whoever decides to do something creative with this technology."

"I think this in one of hundreds of enabling technologies that we're going to see trailed in the next year or so," he said.

Joint Project

The phone was developed jointly by Samsung Electronics and the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. It contains an accelerometer, which detects, calculates and responds to three-dimensional movement.

Samsung said the technology can identify small and rapid movements as well as letters and numbers.

But some analysts wonder how practical the technology really is.

"The tricky bit is in the implementation," Yankee Group's Jackson said. "What can you do with it? What problem does this solve or could it potentially solve?"

Samsung said it imagines the technology revolutionizing the way consumers interact with mobile devices by eliminating the need for complex keypads and said that it has already developed functions that will be incorporated into later models.

For instance, Samsung said, camera phones will be able to switch from landscape to portrait when shooting video or a still picture and will prevent blurring from hand movement. Games will be played by moving the phone up, down, right or left, instead of pressing buttons.

The company even claims that phones will be able to sense changes in body movement and offer dieting and other health tips.