Samsung Electronics is gearing up for the launch of its Galaxy S IV smartphone next week, and leaks are starting to pour in about the gadget's purported specifications and features. According to a New York Times report, one of the new software features will allow the device to track users' eyes to determine when to scroll to a page on the screen.
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Samsung's invitation for its March 14 event offers to "come and meet the next Galaxy." |
The report, citing an unnamed Samsung source familiar with the matter, said that the software will allow a page of text--say, in a Web browser--to automatically scroll down to reveal more text when a user's eyes hit the bottom of the page. Samsung has filed trademarks for "Eye Scroll" and "Eye Pause," suggesting that the technology is in the offing, but it is unclear what is powering the service. According to The Next Web, Israeli startup Umoove might be behind the technology provider. As The Verge notes, in the Galaxy S II Samsung introduced "Smart Stay," which stops the phone's display from dimming when a user is looking at the screen.
Overall, the NYT report said, the S IV's new software features will outweigh the hardware updates Samsung is bringing. Kevin Packingham, Samsung's chief product officer for mobile, declined to discuss details of the new device with the NYT, but he said that it will be a powerhouse on hardware as well as software. "It's an amazing phone," he boasted.
Samsung is holding an event in New York City March 14 to unveil the device, earlier than it did last year for the S III, which was announced in early May in London. Samsung noted in mid-January that global sales of its flagship Galaxy S smartphone line surpassed 100 million. Of the total, Samsung said the original Galaxy S, released in 2010, reached 24 million sales; the S II, released in 2011, had 40 million; and the S III, released in 2012, achieved more than 40 million unit sales as well. The Galaxy S line has been a key factor in pushing Samsung to become the top smartphone and overall handset maker in the world.
According to leaks from the website EVLeaks, the S IV will run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, sport a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display, a quad-core Samsung Exynos 5 processor clocked at 1.7 GHz (though the U.S. version may use Qualcomm's (NASDAQ:QCOM) Snapdragon 600 chip), a 13-megapixel camera, 2 GB of RAM, and will come in 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB variants. Those leaks fit with earlier ones around the device.
For more:
- see this NYT article
- see this GigaOM article
- see this The Verge article
- see this TheNextWeb article
- see this SlashGear article
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