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Samir Back in Action with HandWave; Gesture-based Controls for S60

Published Sep 12th, 2008 12:22PM EDT
BGR

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You remember Samir, right? Made popular by his RotateMe application that enables automatic screen rotation in accelerometer-equipped S60 handsets, Samir has become one of the S60 community’s favorite young developers. He now has a pretty great catalog of apps that own the accelerometer so Samir has apparently decided to move on. What will he tackle next? Apparently the front-facing camera! And why not – it should be good for something, right? Samir’s first new project since launching his new AikonLab website is called HandWave and it’s definitely unique to say the least. The video above shows that the app is essentially a very basic gesture control system that makes use of the front camera and allows users to swipe their hand in front of the phone to trigger actions. So far it looks like only right and left d-pad commands are supported but as you can see it’s working quite well. Hopefully we can consider this a proof of concept and future builds will provide some addition movement recognition. If nothing else it will be funny to watch people swipe at their handsets as the flip through images or skip tracks. Efficient? Probably no, but cool none the less. According to Samir’s site, HandWave will be available for download beginning tomorrow.

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Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.