Samsung has
launched a smartphone which allows users to control its 5in (12.5cm) screen
using only their eyes.
The Galaxy S4
follows on from last year's S3, a product that sold over 40 million units
worldwide.
At a lavish,
Broadway-themed event in New York, the company also demonstrated the phone's
ability to take two different pictures at once.
Analysts
widely regard Samsung to be the biggest challenger to Apple's dominance of
mobile products.
The Galaxy S4
will be rolled out globally at the end of April.
Following the
launch, shares in Samsung fell 1.7% in early trade in Seoul on Friday amid
worries the market for phone upgrades was "flattening out".
The company's
head of mobile communications, JK Shin said 327 mobile operators in 155
countries will carry the handset.
In the UK,
Vodafone, Three, Orange, T-Mobile and EE have all announced plans to offer the
device on their networks.
Through a
series of role-playing scenes, the South Korean firm demonstrated the phone's
key features.
Much was made
of the device's ability to be controlled without touching it.
Using
"Smart pause", the user can pause a video by looking away from the
screen.
Additionally,
the "Smart Scroll" software analyses the user's eyes and wrist to
scroll through emails and other content.
'Gimmicky'
"The
debut of nifty eye motion-sensitive controls to allow users to pause video and
scroll through pages using eye movements alone is smart," said telecoms
expert Ernest Doku from uSwitch.com.
"For
commuters crammed in trains - or just those who love a bit of futuristic tech
that makes their lives easier - this novel feature will really help the Galaxy
S4 to stand out."
However,
Charles Golvin from Forrester Research worried the swathes of new features may
alienate some customers.
"The
larger question is how much of this stuff can people actually use," he
told the BBC.
"There's
no question that there's a lot of powerful technology and innovative features -
but whether people will care about them or use them I'm not sure.
"Including
an image of yourself in a picture that you're taking for someone else - yes, I
think that's a bit gimmicky.
"But on
the video side, for a live chat where it's compositing you and your image to
show both you and what you're seeing - that's not a gimmick."
Lighter and thinner
In another
scene, depicting a backpacker in Shanghai, the phone was shown to translate English
text into Chinese speech - before translating Chinese speech back into English
text.
The dual
camera feature makes use of the device's front and rear cameras simultaneously,
blending the pictures together to make sure the picture taker is not "left
out".
The rear has
a 13 megapixel camera, while the user-facing camera captures pictures at 2
megapixels.
The phone
weighs 130g, and is 7.9mm thick - making it slightly lighter and thinner than
the S3.
The device
uses Samsung's HD AMOLED technology, giving the S4's screen - which is
marginally bigger than the S3's - a resolution of 441 pixels-per-inch.
As predicted
by several industry experts before the event, most of the presentation focused
on the phone's software rather than hardware.
As well as
the "touchless" technology, the company also introduced the Samsung
Hub - a multimedia storage facility that can be shared across multiple Samsung
devices.
Sources :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21791023
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