gesture control

It's a bit more difficult to pin down what Chrome OS and Chromebooks are these days. Although they started simply as a glorified browser OS running on low-power cheap laptops, the product line has stood the test of time to now include high-end hardware, convertible form factors, and support for Android and Linux apps. Part of the confusion in defining Chrome OS can sometimes be gleaned in half-baked features. Today, however, Google closes one of the gaps by making Chrome OS' tablet mode really feel like you're using a tablet.

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After a brief stint with notches, Google returned to a full forehead in the Pixel 4 but not because of a change of heart. It needed more room for its array of front-facing sensors, including the Soli radar chip that enabled one of the phone's key features. Unfortunately, due to the nature of that technology, the Pixel 4's gesture-based Motion Sense isn't available in all markets. It might not matter in the near future since it apparently isn't available to developers outside of Google anyway.

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The Pixel 4 may give Google's Soli gesture recognition its first commercial outing, but it's the car dashboard where I suspect the radar technology could make its biggest splash. Handiwork of Google's ATAP advanced projects team, Soli uses short-range radar to track movements and allow users to interact with virtual controls, something the Pixel 4 will dip an early toe into.

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The Google Pixel 4 leaks are off with a bang this week, with imagery of the phone lineup and features coming in hot and heavy. Clues appearing today suggest there's a sort of feature that'll make use of the Project Soli sensor first revealed by Google in 2015 (and approved by the FCC for testing early this year). Android Aware, or Pixel Aware, it's likely called, or just "Aware". This system could change the way we interact with smartphones forever.

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It isn’t dropping any hints about its rumored foldable or modular dual screen phone but LG has practically confirmed two things it will be revealing next month. While it’s almost a no brainer that it will be talking about the 5G buzzword as well, LG’s invitation to its MWC 2019 press event seems to confirm rumors that it will have a smartphone that won’t require you to touch it or even speak to it just to use it.

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In Google's future, smartphones and such won't necessarily need touchscreens to operate. Instead, with the technology they call Soli, users will be able to control their smart devices with a wave of their hand. While this sort of technology isn't technically completely new, the level to which these gestures will operate is now being taken out a whole new door.

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Over the past week we've played with the Air Hogs Supernova, a tiny drone made to be minimal. This drone is controlled with an on-switch and sensors. The user tells the drone what to do and how to act with a series of gestures - hand signals in the air - and all power is provided by a charging cable that's not unlike what smartphone users have for their smartphone. This drone is just about as simple as a drone gets.

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It seems that the next smartphone trend after notches are button-less, swipe-based, pill-using navigation gestures. And, like the notch, we have Apple and its iPhone X to thank, or curse, for that. Android P will unabashedly have its own gestured-based navigation UI. If you're a fan of that feature, however, you need not wait that long or forever to get it. The folks over at XDA have released their own Navigation Gestures app that offers exactly that and a lot more. But while the app doesn't require root access, you'll need to aware of two important things before you go any further.

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You've probably noticed by now, but a lot of today's flagship phones have very similar feature lists and specification sheets. As a result, many manufacturers are looking for ways to make their phones stand out from the crowd. This isn't limited to just the realm of Android, either, as Apple is said to be considering two big features for future iPhones that could help differentiate them in an increasingly crowded market.

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A patent published this week points to Google having a deep knowledge of spacially aware gestures for control of devices of all sorts. We'd known that Google was working on tech to recognize our hands swiping through the air as controls for smartphones - but this is a bit different. This expands upon that - beyond the realm of pre-configured controls and into the world of DIY.

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Although it is a highly capable smartphone in its own right, the HTC U11 would have probably been overshadowed by the likes of the Galaxy S8 or even the OnePlus 5 if not for two things. One is a camera highly praised by DxOMark. The other is its squeezable Edge Sense gestures. Not unlike Samsung's Bixby, the version of Edge Sense that new HTC U11 owners got was raw and underwhelming. Now the company is assuring customers that more are yet to come, starting with these actions.

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Smartwatches are nifty hi-tech toys, but, unless they mature soon, they will remain as such, toys. In the face of competition from more focused, not to mention cheaper, smart fitness bands, smartwatches have a hard time breaking out of its niche market. That, however, doesn’t mean smartwatches aren’t capable. In fact, even run of the mill ones pack a piece of hardware that, when fine tuned and exploited, can actually make the smartwatch feel like a device from the future. And that hardware is none other than the accelerometer.

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