The Smart features that Samsung introduced last year with its Galaxy S3 will be taken a step further with the Galaxy S4. Leaked screenshots have revealed that the eye-tracking Smart stay feature will be joined by ‘Smart stop’, ‘Smart scroll’ and ‘Smart rotation’.
A recent report from The New York Times told of high-tech eye-tracking features that would be packed in to the Galaxy S IV, which itself is set to be revealed on March 14th. Now, screenshots supposedly from the phone show what these features will be called and what they do.
By the looks of things we will be able to scroll down web pages, emails and more with our eyes, thanks to a feature called Smart scroll. The settings menu of the phone reveals that this feature will work in the native web browser, Chrome, Gmail and the Email app, amongst others which we can’t see just yet. This feature will utilise the phone’s front-facing camera to detect as your eyes move down the screen and automatically scroll for you – truly hands-free!
Joining Smart scroll and last year’s Smart stay features will be Smart stop. Working in the same way with the front camera, Smart stop will detect when you look away from your phone when watching a video and automatically pause it. We can see this feature getting a little annoying if you’re watching in low light, as the phone will probably struggle to detect your eye movements.
Finally, Smart rotation looks to be an addition. Depending on your angle of view the phone will adjust to flip the screen horizontally or vertically. We’re not sure just how useful this will be, but we’re eager to find out.
All will be revealed in a week at Samsung’s Unpacked event in New York City.