Touchscreens have been around in one form or another for decades now, but their modern presence on smartphones and tablets has really defined the way we interact with these devices. While very intuitive, having to physically touch your screen isn’t always the most convenient thing — especially if you’ve got messy hands.Motion Senseon the Google Pixel 4 gave us a taste of how hands-free phone control could work, and now it looks like Xiaomi is poised to bring it back, with plans for a similar feature on what seems to be an upcoming tablet.
Xiaomi appears to be working on device equipped with a ToF camera that will support hands-free air gesture control, according toevidence shared by MIUIPolska writer Kacper Skrzypek(viaAndroid Authority). Users will be able to control media playback, adjust volume, skip tracks, turn pages, and even answer or end phone calls, all without touching the screen. This hands-free functionality should also extend to other aspects, such as automatically locking the device when the user walks away and lighting up the screen when the user approaches.
While the Pixel 4 used Google’s Soli radar, the system here would be optical. To get started, the user just needs to place their hand 15 to 40cm away from the screen. After holding it there for a moment, they can interact with the space in front of the phone using MIUI’s gestures. Skrzypek speculates that we’re most likely looking at a tablet here, but other companies have been exploring this kind of functionality in modern phones, like on theHonor Magic 5 Pro.
While there’s a lot we still need to learn about this sytem, its success is really going to come down to two questions: how well does Xiaomi’s implementation work, and will users actually prefer any of this over touchscreen interaction? Motion Sense controlfelt like a gimmick on the Pixel 4, and we’ve yet to be convinced that Xiaomi can do it any better; for now, we’ll just need to wait and see how it turns out.
