One of the new software features introduced by HTC’s Sense 6 is called Motion Launch, which offers users a cool new way to interact with the new HTC One (M8) handset without actually turning the display on. HTC revealed during its live show on Tuesday that on average, smartphone users press the power button to unlock their devices over 150 times a day, and that’s why it figured out new ways of interacting with it without requiring users to power it on.
Motion Launch is able to leverage the power of the phone’s built-in sensors to detect position and movement, including swipes on the screen, and offer users various sensor-based features. Motion Launch, as described in BGR’s extensive HTC One (M8) review, supports the following gestures:
- Picking up the phone in portrait orientation and tapping twice on the display will turn the screen on.
- Swiping from left to right will turn the screen on and go open BlinkFeed.
- Swiping from right to left will open the main home screen.
- Swiping from the bottom up will open whatever screen the phone was on when it went to sleep.
- Swiping the top down will open voice dialing.
- Picking up the phone in landscape orientation and pressing the volume button will open the camera app.
- Picking up the phone while it’s ringing and putting it to the side of your head will answer the call.
Some of these features may sound familiar because other Android device makers already use some of them in their devices including LG (KnockOn and Knock Code to unlock the display, Motorola (Quick Capture to take a picture) or Samsung (Direct Call), but they still may be more than useful additions to Sense, and could help users conserve additional battery power by not turning on the display so often.
Finally, the HTC One (M8) also comes with an interesting case, called Dot View, which will display certain information including notifications through its dot-matrix pattern and support touch and swipe gestures for controlling the phone with the cover on.
