LG Teases Touchless Gestures in Upcoming LG G8

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At the dawn of the modern smartphone era a decade ago, OEMs tried crazy things to see what worked. There were phones with keyboards, phones with fold-out screens, and phones with kickstands. Today, smartphones are much less varied, just we could be due for an evolution. LG apparently thinks it's time for gestures. It'southward teasing a Mobile World Congress unveiling for a device with touchless gesture control.

The teaser video doesn't include much in the way of details. It promises we can say "goodbye" to affect, simply that might exist overselling it. It'southward a foregone conclusion that this phone (probable the LG G8) volition include a touchscreen. You're not saying bye to bear upon, but maybe you'll be able to use the gesture characteristic instead of bear upon on occasion. LG has been losing money on smartphones for several years, so it's anxious for a win. Gestures might not be enough to turn things around, but there'southward still a lot we don't know nigh the G8.

It looks from the video like you lot'll at least exist able to scroll through spider web pages or documents on your phone past waving a mitt. That implies the phone will be able to watch for and identify hand movements — at that place may be a defended 3D sensor (that would also be handy for face unlock) or the phone could just use the front-facing photographic camera to detect gestures with the aid of some machine learning algorithms.

LG isn't the first to await at gesture control for smartphones. Samsung deployed a similar feature on the Galaxy S4 chosen Air Gestures. This feature utilized the phone's proximity sensor to detect swipes, allowing y'all to move icons and coil around in the browser. However, the feature was extremely buggy and it just worked in certain apps. Samsung dropped it in subsequent phones.

Meanwhile, Google has demoed the much more than advanced Projection Soli in 2015. Soli used a small radio bit to rail manus movements in the space effectually it. Google showed Soli simulating buttons, sliders, and knobs with hand gestures. Google hasn't mentioned Soli since then, only a contempo regulatory waiver suggests information technology's still working on Soli internally.

The characteristic LG shows off at MWC volition most probable fall somewhere betwixt those two. It will hopefully offer more functionality than Samsung offered back in 2013 merely nothing similar the magical Projection Soli demo. We'll know for sure when LG unveils its latest smartphone on February 24th.

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