Motorola waves in gesture-sensitive phone
Shake to activate
In a bullish attempt to shake up the mobile phone market, Motorola has launched a gesture-sensitive handset you must shake, rattle and – possibly – roll to operate.
Motorola's W7: shake it to make it work
The Moto W7 Active Edition is described as “a motion-enabled 3G mobile” designed for anyone after a "moving” – if you’ll pardon the pun – phone experience.
Fitted with an accelerometer, the W7 senses your body’s motions, orientations and hand gestures to perform tasks. For example, you can silence an incoming call by flipping the phone over or shake it twice to launch your favourite application.
The idea’s bound to appeal to some, but could turn out to be more of a hindrance than a help. Just imagine what could happen if you’d had one too many and tried to shake the phone to launch its SMS app.
Also equipped with 3G and a 2Mp camera
Flicks can be used to cycle through images in your photo library and turning the phone over will also snooze the alarm clock. An integrated pedometer can even be used to record your daily exercise.
A 2Mp camera’s built-in for snapping still images and a second user-facing camera’s on-board for making video calls. Images are displayed on its 2.2in, 320 x 240 screen and stored onto Micro SD cards of up to 8GB – although one isn’t included.
Motorola’s W7 will be available in two colour options – “Liquorice” and “Alpine White” – and will launch during Q2. A price hasn’t been released. ®
COMMENTS
Gesture activated camera...
An excerpt from the manual:
"Use the screen as a viewfinder and shake twice to take the picture."
Shurely shome mishtake...
Paris because all the best footage of her is blurry.
doesn't make things easier
having to shake, flip and jerk your phone around doesn't make it easier to do. it's far quicker and easier to just use your thumb to press the cancel button to skip a call, or tap the screen to start an application
this is why no one likes motorolla phones anymore
whatever "innovative" ideas they have are stupid and useless - they don't add appeal to the phone, they take it away
I hope it works better than Sony Ericsson's attempts.
I have an accelerometer in my SE phone, which is just supposed to change the screen orientation for web browsing, and let you skip tracks with a shake of the phone when playing music.
Neither feature works very well. The inbuilt web browser often just flips the screen at random, and requires a vigorous frustrated shake to try and make it get back to the right way up. The music player track skip too works more often by accident than design.
Paris, because she is happy for you to flip her any way up.
In a bullish attempt to shake up the mobile phone market ?
Incorrect. "In a desperate attempt to save the mobile phone maker" would have been more appropriate
New yet old.
Come on Motorola its not the missing features that make your handsets fail to sell, but the fact that your handsets still look as crap as they did in the 90's.
