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LG's MWC teaser hints at phones with more touchless gestures
Besides the potential of foldable/expandable devices and 5G, what else can we expect to see at Mobile World Congress next month? According to LG's invite to its Premiere event on February 24th, we'll say "Goodbye Touch." The video clip shows a hand summoning and dismissing text with a simple wave, similar to things we've seen from tech like Samsung's Air Gesture that arrived in the Galaxy S4. Presumably LG's implementation will be far more advanced than what we experienced back in 2013, but we'll have to wait and see.
Nokia adds Peek hover function to Lumias running latest Amber OS update
It doesn't come close to the suite of air gestures Samsung's included in the Galaxy S 4, but Nokia's pushing out an update to give Lumia owners a limited taste of that hands-free functionality. Bundled into a new version 1.6 bump for display + touch settings released today is a new Peek feature, which gives Lumia owners the ability to wake their phones and glance at notifications with a mere hand wave. Sadly, it's only compatible with Lumia devices running the latest Amber update -- currently set for a vague "summer" rollout -- which makes this hover-to-wake function a 925-only affair for the time being.
Samsung demos Smart Scroll, Smart Pause and Air Gesture on Galaxy S 4
Along with several other new software features demoed at its event in New York today, Samsung showed off a Smart Scroll utility, which lets you page up or down by tilting the Galaxy S 4 in the corresponding direction. The company also demoed Air Gesture, which similarly lets you scroll without putting your fingers to the glass. Finally, a feature called Smart Pause will detect your eye movements to intelligently stop video when your gaze turns away from the screen. With dramatics fitting of the Radio City Music Hall venue, Sammy gave us a quick look at all these features in action: at a bachelorette party, where Air Gesture lets partiers look at messages without putting down those champagne flutes; on the street, where a woman can check out that guitarist on the corner without missing a second of the latest Engadget Show and -- well, Smart Scroll is straightforward enough to speak for itself. Read more about the Galaxy S 4's software and hardware in our hands-on preview. %Gallery-182898% Check out our event hub for all the action from Samsung's Galaxy S 4 event.
Pioneer's latest Raku Navi GPS units take commands from hand gestures
An AR heads-up display wasn't the only navigation hardware Pioneer showed off at CEATEC 2012. The firm also took the opportunity to tear the wraps off a new line of gesture-controlled Raku Navi GPS units. With the infrared-powered Air Gesture feature, drivers can wave their hand in front of a device to pull up a menu with commands such as setting their home or a personal haunt as a destination or skipping to the next tune on a playlist. Once a hand is retracted, the menu will be replaced with the usual map interface. Though the solution isn't completely hands-free, horizontal hand waves can be assigned one of ten different functions. Japanese store shelves will be lined with two dashboard-embeddable units by mid-October, while four console-independent models will join them in early November. As of now, there's no word if the hardware will make the pilgrimage stateside.
