Motion Controlled Smartphone Previewed

BoB writes "The folks at MobileBurn have had a chance to play in detail with a new motion controlled smartphone prototype by MyOrigo, called 'mydevice'. Surprisingly, it actually works quite well, and the writer claims it's fun to use, too. Is this the start of a whole range of motion controlled devices?" We covered a previous showing of MyOrigo's device a few months back.

About the name

[Emil Brink]

I'm not sure if it's obvious to English-speaking folks, since I'm too lazy (and/or focused; I'm at work) to check with Greek and other languages, but the word "origo" is Swedish for "origin". I guess that makes sense for the device, and can almost smell the marketing-speak about "putting you at the center" or something... ;)

Re:About the name

[mikkom]

The word "origo" can be translated to "the center point", it's just a plain mathematical term that is used widely. (I'm finnish and origo doesn't mean a thing in finnish, it doesn't even sound like a finnish word)

Re:About the name

[esbjorn]

Nopes, the only meaning of "origo" in swedish is for the Origin (Point O) of a coordinate system. So "putting in the center" might make sense.
But "origo" is not a swedish word at all.

Re:About the name

[randyest]

So, can you tell me if books and magazines in Sweden are "backwards", like in Japan (where you read from the "back" of books to the "front", i.e. start a book with the binding to the right instead of left, and tuern pages from left to right, instead of the other way around as in most Western countries)?

If not, either the reviewer got it backwards, or this device is backwards in the "page" mode:

Finally, we have the "My Book" system, which is basically a way of presenting information in a book style fo

Re:About the name

[Anonymous Coward]

The old story about self-centered Swedes proves itself again... Origo is a latin word, dumbass.

Re:About the name

[GQuon]

Origo is a latin word, dumbass.
Yes, but it's used in Swedish, dumbass.

Slashdotted?

[metlin]

Am getting some weirdo JSP errors.

But here's the Google cache to the rescue [216.239.41.104].

On the move?

[WIAKywbfatw]

I wonder how well the motion control and mirroring work when you're on the move.

I can imagine how annoying it would be to have web pages scroll when you don't want them to scroll just because you were walking too quickly or the car or train you were travelling in provided a less than perfect ride.

Frankly, it seems like a big gimmick to me. UI that doesn't take into account practicality - UI for UI's sake - is doomed to failure.

Re:On the move?

[Siener]

can imagine how annoying it would be to have web pages scroll when you don't want them to scroll just because you were walking too quickly or the car or train you were travelling in provided a less than perfect ride.

RTFA. There is a button you have to "lightly touch" before the scrolling works, so no accidental scrolling because of random movements.

I do however wonder how controlable the scrolling would be in the situations you mention.

Re:On the move?

[trentblase]

Yeah, but what if you want to scroll while you are walking? Thats a lot of extra acceleration to compensate for.

Re:On the move?

[WIAKywbfatw]

I did RTFA. That's how I know they talk about motion control and mirroring. But UI design that fails to take into account how we use devices - and I'm not stretching anyone's imagination by suggesting that mobile phones are primarily used by people on the move - is bad UI.

If these features prove unusable to anyone moving at average walking speed or higher, then what yse are they? (NB. I'm not saying that is the case, only asking what use they are if it is so.)

Re:On the move?

[Dashing Leech]

...at average walking speed or higher

If you surf the web while walking at normal speeds or faster, remind me to put a bunch of crap in your way and bring a video camera so I can capture the hilarity that ensues.

Re:On the move?

[ElGanzoLoco]

Did you read the article? Motion control / mirroring only are activated when you have your finger on that particular touch-sensitive button. Release button, motion control deactivates...

It seems to be a quite interesting device... But they say it's "slightly bigger than the P800", so that's a no-no for me :)

Re:On the move?

[MonkeyINAbaG]

Frankly, it seems like a big gimmick to me. UI that doesn't take into account practicality

I tend to aggree with you.
This phone got a good asskissing evaluation, but looks like it was tested in an office environment, not the natural habitat of a mobile, or cellular devices.
Possibly this technology is suited more for a desktop PC, or other non-critical motionless devices.
I also think this would be difficult to sell to our button-mad consumers, who are the reason for UI anyway.
I won't be buying one unti

great . . .

[loraksus]

So not only do people see me "talking to myself" (earpiece) but also me jerking my phone rapidly and waving my arms.
I just need a 3 way call with 2 shrinks to be given one of those nifty white jackets with the long sleeves.
"I'm not crazy. . . Yes I am. . . Shut up, all of you."

Bigger than the P800

[trentblase]

We're going in the wrong direction, people!

Also, no mention of outdoor screen brightness/contrast that I could find. That could be a killer with no real buttons.

Re:Bigger than the P800

[10Ghz]

It's a bit longer than P800 but it's thinner.

Another reason for people to think you're crazy..

[bakreule]

First it was mobile phones in general. Remember way back when you could hear someone talking in public, but there were no answering voices? ("Who the HELL is he talking to???")

Next came handsfree with autoanswering. It scared the crap out of me when the guy in front of me in line, sorta-kinda looking in my direction, would all of a sudden say, "Hello? Hi! How's it going?"

Now people will think you're epiletic or something when they see you waving a phone about crazily. Reading email isn't that bad, but what happens when you install Pacman?

Although maybe it would be good exercise against carpals....

Re:Another reason for people to think you're crazy

[trentblase]

Just wait until someone writes some kind of wacky motion sensing version of DDR for this thing. The looks will be priceless.

Stupid name ...

[straybullets]

"Can I use your my device, please ?"

Re:Stupid name ...

[Ripplet]

I absolutely agree. I hate any name that begins with "My". It's just pants!!

It's as if some years ago, some marketroid deep in the basements of Redmond once wanted to leave a bit earlier than normal on a friday afternoon:
Engineer: "Hey marketing dude, what shall we call this new thing we've got here?"
Marketing Dude: "Aw hell I dunno, let's just call it 'MyThing'".

Then, incredibly, other marketroids the world over simply gave in and got assimilated:
Marketroid1: "Well that's it then, Microsoft have come up with the ultimate naming scheme, might as well take our stock options and retire now."
Marketroid2: "Hey wait a moment, they can't trademark just the 'My' part of it right? So we can call our other thing that we make 'MyOtherThing', yay!"

Marketroids the world over rejoiced, and never did any work again, even though they were getting paid even more than before because they were coming up with names as good as Microsoft's.

Unfortunately, the rest of us got stuck with the stupid friggin' Mythis, Mythat, Mykitchensink, ad infinitum.
And as for having 'my' in *both* the product and company name, all I can say is: "My, oh my, oh my!!!"

Playing in public

[alephnull42]

First impressions:
- There's a technical term for people shaking their things in public. I believe the term is "w*nker" or "exhibitionist"
- Cellphone etiquette has improved a bit at last, and we have grown used to people talking to themselves in public. With this innovation, we can expect guys in suits doing a weird St-Vitus-SHake-that-funky-booty-type dance in restaurants, airports, streets.
- Looking at the problems my father used to have with his self-winding mechanical watch - i.e. Look, shake, hold to ear to see if its ticking, shake swear, hold to ear again, twiddle knob, shake, swear, swear - and this was in a time when people were still able to build GOOD mechanical devices, I cant see this thing lasting very long before it goes on the blink.

"If you wish to speak to an operator, put your hands on your hips, and stick your knees insiiiiiiide"

Re:Playing in public

[pigah]

I agree with points 1 and 2, but Im guessing that the motion detection hardware is solid state, not mechanical, so that the wear and tear is of a different sort. You wont have springs popping out of your my device

Re:Playing in public

[trentblase]

It's surely electromechanical. As in MEMS. I played with a MEMS accelerometer once... microscopic springs, cost about $10. SSOP is a bitch to solder.

iPAQ

[perly-king-69]

When Compaq (RIP) were developing the iPAQ they looked at using a similar method of navigation. I remember reading an article in Linux Journal(?) about playing Doom under Linux controlled by shaking the pda around.

Re:iPAQ

[worthb]

Yes, it was called "Rock 'n' Scroll" and you can read about it here [compaq.com].

Re:iPAQ

[CWCarlson]

...and if you have a Palm device, you can build your own tilt sensor (either as a dongle or installed internally, depending on your model) with the information here [harbaum.org].

There's a library for the dongle, a hack to 'map' tilt motions to the hard scroll keys, and a pretty cool game called Mulg [harbaum.org] (which works even without the sensor).

Re:iPAQ

[domcamus]

Doom on iPAQ is all very well, but wouldn't you rather play an FPS on your PC ? I would. The real issue with games content is exploiting the potential of having a hi-res motion control system as standard. This article [guardian.co.uk] in The Guardian [guardian.co.uk] mentions that a game-oriented release of the device is being considered. If this rumour has any basis in fact then I suspect we can look forward to something a bit more interesting than ports of Doom <yawn>.

Mirror

[soliaus]

Server is a little sluggish, here are a few mirrors. If link one doesnt work, use link 2, its for my faster pipe.

Mirror One - http://spark.ath.cx/mirror/ [spark.ath.cx]
Mirror Two - http://decompile.us/mirror/ [decompile.us]

Injurious?

[glpierce]

As we have seen from the rapid rise in carpal tunnel syndrome, repetitive strain injuries, etc., as a result of the increase in computer (and perhaps video game) use, overuse/misuse of the arms/wrists/hands can have major negative effects on people - I wonder if devices like this will just make matters that much worse by requiring even more rapid and jerky movements. On the other hand, is it possible that the range of motion will actually be an improvement over typing and other current methods of interactio

Jokes aside

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a button on the side you hold when you want to scroll, so it won't scroll when you don't want it to. Also, it automatically goes to landscape when you turn the handset sideways. The "Haptic" feedback seems interesting, too, but I bet it's a real battery hog.

Re:Jokes aside

[CBravo]

Gravity sensors do not use that much energy. Processing those sensors data should be pretty trivial.

Software wise, hooking in those controls, can be difficult (maybe?).

Re:Jokes aside

[javatips]

Maybe you should RTFA, when the grand-parent was talking battery drain it was for the "haptick" feedback wich is implemented by making the device vibrate when you tao a button on the touch screen. I can see this vibration draining the battery at a faster rate than if it was not enabled.

No more broken keys!!!

[dew-genen-ny]

Seriously, if they can make these things usable I'd be most, most happy:

I've now had 2 or 3 relatively expensive mobiles and every single one has at some stage or other had problems with the keypad - it's gutting to have a nice swanky phone but still take 5 minutes to do the most simple tasks.

Motion control = games !! ;)

[ElGanzoLoco]

That "motion control" feature seems quite cool (i RTFA'd)... I can see a lot of games that could make use of this feature.

First example that comes to mind: these little car racing games you find on lots of mobile phones now (or on the GBA, colinMc Rae Rally & such...). One could use the phone itself as a car wheel, tilt it left to turn left, tilt it right to turn right, pull it towards you to brake, push it away from you to accelerate... (Would be cool for flight sims too)

The phone could even "counter-rotate" the image to compensate for the tilting: picture still upright even when you've tilted the device 90 degrees to make a turn. (I'm not sure if I'm being clear enough on this point)
You could also make a simulation of these wood & plastic games, where you had to navigate a metallic ball through a maze, by just tilting the device...

Since games are apparently becoming the next big thing for mobile phones (that, and polyphonic ringtones :( ), myOrigo could have a point there (licence technology to Nokia nGage?)

Remember in 5 years, when myorigo will have outplaced Nintendo & Sony thanks to these features: you heard it here first! ;)

Re:Motion control = games !! ;)

[ElGanzoLoco]

I never tried the Nokia Ngage, so I trust you on this point.

My little brother has a GBA Special Edition, this little thingy is amazing... I had never gone beyond the original Game Boy, so when I
saw him play Colin Mc Rae Rally in full 3D, I couldn't believe it at first ;)

But Nokia has something the others don't: they understand the economics of the mobile phone industry, and maybe with version 2.0 of the NGage they will also have been able to take into account the gripes of the gamers... Wait and see...

I

Re:Motion control = games !! ;)

[clickety6]

But if you're tilting the device to drive the car, doesn't it make it difficult to concentrate on the screen as it is tilting too? Especially as the image is not large to begin with. Or am i supposed to be leaning and tilting my head to compensate? Either way, it doesn't sound particularly comfortable or doesn't seem to offer a better way of working.And if I want a ball maze, I can buy one for a few pence!

Re:Motion control = games !! ;)

[ElGanzoLoco]

But if you're tilting the device to drive the car

No, that was my second paragraph: while you are tilting the device, say, 45 degrees left, the *image* on the screen "counterrotates" 45 degrees right, so you still see it upright/horizontal without tilting your head... (granted that would require quite a lot of processing / battery)I'd like to make a sketch but I only have MS Paint, soo...

And if I want a ball maze, I can buy one for a few pence!
Yeah, but you don't get the 99 levels + the hidden bonuses

Re:Motion control = games !! ;)

[clickety6]

No, that was my second paragraph: while you are tilting the device, say, 45 degrees left, the *image* on the screen "counterrotates" 45 degrees right, so you still see it upright/horizontal without tilting your head...

So the screen has to shrink at one end and grow at the otehr end to emulate perspective? That still means that the alreayd small picture gets even smaller.

What you would really need in this case is for the screen to be mounted on some sort of frame so that the device moves around it but th

Re:Motion control = games !! ;)

[gummint]

There's considerable biological and evolutionary evidence that motion (gesture) is intimately related to the development of language and the brain. See Section I of "Sense in Communication," available at www.galbithink.org [galbithink.org]. So I think that incorporating more bodily movement into digital games will be an important future trend, even if N-Gage hasn't quite gotten it right. For a different device that does this, consider EyeToy [eyetoy.com].

Contra Ref

[241comp]

Of course, to access your speed dial you just use the "special code" - Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right.

Re:Contra Ref

[CBravo]

Or even better: draw a letter in the air.

Re:Contra Ref

[aardwolf204]

Konami Code!

U D U D L R L R B A
u d u d l r l r b a

It's-a-me, Mario! Or Kirby.

[Channard]

The technology itself isn't new - I'm just surprised it took this long for someone to integrate it in this manner. A Kirby Pinball game on the GBA put this to practical use, having the motion of the GBA - or rather the motion of a sensor in the cart - determine how Kirby rolled around. Cue Super Monkey Ball 3 on the Origo..

play in detail?

[utexaspunk]

i can't read the article, so i'll make fun of it... how the hell does one "play in detail"? HALLO?? SPEAKIE ENGRISH PPLZ!? nyah...

Re:play in detail?

[imacpro]

I had to stop in the middle of reading this article because the only positive description word used is 'intuitive'. It reminds me of the use of 'inconceivable' in the Princess Bride. :-P

Can't resist saying it...

[Vandil X]

This will add a whole new dimension to "phone sex".

Old joke revisited?

[Overzeetop]

So...if you shake it more than three times, does that mean you're playing with it?

What OS?

[donbrock]

Ok it looks really cool but I want to know the important stuff like what OS does it run on? If it's WinCE then it's garbage. Anything else, I'm interested.

Re:What OS?

[donbrock]

Only a cowardly AC would make such an ignorant, arrogant reply.

Re:What OS?

[sgtron]

OpenJava
here's all the specs [mobileburn.com]

Already got one.

[SubconsciousSeraphim]

My cell phone is already motion controlled; I move my fingers in a way so as to poke the protruding buttons on it, which triggers input.

Also, I can throw my phone at the wall when I'm getting bad reception. I've been told that this does not improve functionality of the phone, but it sure makes me feel better.

Do the Mobile

[Lipongo]

I can see it now in the headlines "New dance craze sweeps across the nation" To the tune of do the Hustle.

"Do the Mobile"

"Tilt" didn't catch on for monitors, did it?

[ianscot]

I had a Radius "tilt" monitor for a while in the early 90s, as one of the three monitors at my Mac workstation in a design firm. You'd have thought the idea of being able to reorient the screen would have appealed then, too -- sometimes you want landscape for layout, sometimes you want portrait to see a whole text document at once. At the time people's monitors (resolutions) weren't able to show an entire page at once, so they were doing it for the same reason -- to cram more into a smallish space.

Anyway,

It would be nice

[junics]

If the device could detect faster than walk movement and activate NA/busy mode.
This would probably prevent some traffic accidents, not shure if anyone who normally talk and drive would buy one.

Tilting pie menus rock!

[SimHacker]

There's an earlier slashdot article about "Gyroscope Gives CellPhones" 'Tilt Control' [slashdot.org]". Probably not gyroscopes, but actually MEMS accelerometers [stanford.edu].

Pie menus [piemenu.com] are a naturally efficient way to operate a tilt-sensitive user interface. Scrolling up and down through one-dimensional linear menus with a device that can tilt in any directions is a waste of the device's potential.

Here's a cool research paper from Sony's Computer Science Labs, about "tilting pie menus". I love it! I can't wait till all cell phones can sense tilt. Tilt control rocks!

Tilting Operations for Small Screen Computers [sony.co.jp]
By Jun Rekimoto [sony.co.jp], Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Inc.
More details: Tilting Operations for Small Screen Interfaces (Tech Note) [sony.co.jp]
HTML version from Google [216.239.53.104]

-Don