There’s only so much room for a touchscreen on your wrist. Unless you’re dressed like Dick Tracy, talking into your watch will make you look like you’ve lost the plot. A newly uncovered Samsung patent looks to motion-tracking gestures as potential supplementary smartwatch controls to ease the burden on the smaller devices.
The concept details a smartwatch with a built-in camera that would recognise movements and the position of your fingers in order to trigger specific commands. Making a fist could activate one command, while the patent suggests that a flick of a finger could push content from the watch to a smart TV.
Elsewhere in the patent, Samsung looks at the potential for a rotating ring around the edge of the screen, which could be used for scrolling through options or web pages, along with standard touchscreen controls through its circular display.
As ever, a patent is no guarantee of consumer product development, but with Samsung already the company most invested in smartwatches, these features don’t seem impossible for inclusion somewhere down the line. Whether waving your arms around is more socially-acceptable than voice commands however remains shadowed in doubt. [USPTO via Android Authority, Engadget]
