News - Microsoft's next Windows Phone to include 3D Touch technology

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'Lumia McLaren', the successor to the Lumia 1020, is to have 3D touch controls.

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These sound like features I already have on my Samsung Note 2. I don't use any of them.
If I'm planning on answering a call, I'd prefer to consciously make that decision, rather than risk my phone doing something I don't want it to. Equally if I wish to hang up, I don't want to be left wondering whether I'm still connected to that person after I've put the phone in my pocket.

Gimmicks.

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Originally Posted by miniyazz

These sound like features I already have on my Samsung Note 2. I don't use any of them.
If I'm planning on answering a call, I'd prefer to consciously make that decision, rather than risk my phone doing something I don't want it to. Equally if I wish to hang up, I don't want to be left wondering whether I'm still connected to that person after I've put the phone in my pocket.

Gimmicks.

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Yeap , my note 2 can do these things too.

Well done Nokia for catching up with some pointless gimmicks.

Plus with that nick name 'McLaren' - bet there will be a massive price premium to have a phone with that name.

Did you guys watch the video?

This is NOTHING, like that.

Think about browsing a web page, many web pages have actions that are triggered by the mouse going over, rather than a click. This can allow that kind of natural interaction.

For example, have a look at:
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology
They have a bar on the right, which when you mouse over (hover over) expands and such.

That idiom is currently not possible on mobile phones.

If this technology is accurate enough, it could really help with selection, for example, think how mobile Chrome works, it has a nice feature if there are many hyperlinks in an area, it puts a magnified version up, letting you select the one you want. You could now do that feature, with only one tap, it would be more natural, as soon as you were nearly touching that hyper link, it would make it easier to delineate the one you want.

This shouldn't be about silly gimmics, I don't think we need another gesture to answer a call or similar, which few people do many times a day. However compare that to selecting text, browsing a web page. Those actions I do many times a day, and would really rather like to be improved.

Hovering is something I miss on a phone, considering how well it worked 10 years ago on my TabletPC.

"the ability to answer calls by holding the device to your ear
enabling speakerphone when you place your phone down on the table during a call
hanging up calls by placing the device into a pocket"

Huh, my Galaxy S3 can do all of those, right out of the box.

Can someone tell me why it took them so long to make this? We have had the technology to do this for decades now. I'm just an amatuer electronics builder, but I can go up to my bin of parts right now and rig up a device that can detect how far away my finger is based on either: ultrasonic pulses, a laser, or even something as simple as ambient light. It could easily be done with capacitance sensing, that's just something that I don't have the technology to build in my basement. And it would be even easier to rig up a 3-axis system to detect 3D movement.

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Originally Posted by moeburn

It could easily be done with capacitance sensing, that's just something that I don't have the technology to build in my basement. And it would be even easier to rig up a 3-axis system to detect 3D movement.

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I made a thermin at Uni one day (I had permission to what I wanted for a Microcontroller Credit). I decided mine was going to better than the standard ones because I was going to digitally analyse what was going on.

I used a fairly off the shelf PIC, but struggled to get my opamps actually doing their job, formatting the signals nicely for the ADC. I'm crap at analogue stuff, so I called across the lab to one of my buddies who is rather excellent, ah it's obvious, I've got too little Z on the 'scope so it's messing the whole thing up before I've even started. So I quickly make a little diagnostic program, just spits out the ADC to LEDs. We're scratching our heads as to why it's being so un-reliable, we just can't seem to get it to work properly.

Then someone else realises, the LEDs were effecting the power available to the amplification circuit... These were taking 10ma each.

So the obvious step? Tant Bead Cap All The Things ^TM. I'd been working on this for about 8 hours now, so I wasn't in a mood to fail. I put about 20 decoupling capacitors on everything. Then it started to work quite well. Trial and error allowed me to calibrate the band pass amplification, to filter out the nonsense and just let me focus on the capacitance of the hand between the antina probes.

The ability to get that on a phone, that will work in all humidities, near a CRT screen or direct sunlight, that won't get upset when someone puts a sticker over the glass is incredibly impressive.

Sure the physics of it are simple to understand. But a useful implementation, less simple.

That is why I'll be really excited if they've enough accuracy to be useful, to be another input that you'd actually use. A lot of people here are missing the point, the comp vision one is going to be a bit lacking, sluggish by nature, and at the mercy of ambient lighting conditions. So let's not take the most boring features you could do with this kind of sensor, and just because there is a sub-optimal implementation of that on the market write it off.

It's akin to someone saying my Prius can drive fast, therefore I see no reason why aerobatics would be any more thrilling.

The only reason why this is exciting is that it's Microsoft Research working on it.

"3D Touch" doesn't work well in the consumer space at the moment. The closest real world mass market device we have is the leap motion, and whilst that's a lot of fun and great from a technology perspective, it's absolutely useless in day to day interaction with a computer. Humans just do not get the "hover" bit and for a huge percentage of the population they physically can't do it due to shakes/lack of dexterity and so on. Thats it's biggest issue really, we need something tactile to touch to confirm an interaction and make it feel natural.

I can't personally see how they can crack that, but this is MS research, who knows what they will come up with :)

The most useful application I can think of is improving touch accuracy and "prediction" in a very subtle way. Things like understanding the difference between your hand approaching the device from the left instead of the right, or adapting responses depending on which finger you use etc. That sort of stuff is not exciting to most users, but will dramatically improve our interactions with these devices.

I just hope they licence the tech at a reasonable rate so that it isn't restricted to Lumia + WP devices, or i'll never get to see it :(

I just found a huge use for this....

I bought a ****ty smart watch - really small screen...

The depth sensing would allow 'zooming' for these smaller screens - making them much more useful!