Can’t touch this – S60 Touch & touchless gestures

Judging the latest information on the S60 Touch user interface I have come to the conclusion that it goes beyond multi-touch screen technologies. Unwiredview.com reports on one of Nokia’s filed patents from June last year describing how gestures and sounds are to be used as a way to interact with a device.

 

Some of the basic gestures include clockwise and counter-clockwise circles to scroll up and down, draw an ‘X’ to delete or cancel, draw an ‘Check’ to accept. There’s also more advanced commands combining touch and touchless commands at the same time to make the application behave accordingly.

The technique makes use of a series of so called Ultrasonic Transducers (UST’s) dispersed around the device’s display. These UST’s (yummie it sounds so hi-tech) makes use of ultrasonic (non hearable) sound wave reflections to detect and record motion in front of the device, working somewhat like commonly used motion-sensor alarms.

All of you planning to buy the first S60 Touch enabled device, don’t get your hopes up as of yet. Touchless gestures are not likely to be included in the first S60 Touch release which should arrive later this year.

[Via: unwiredview.com]