Samsung Galaxy S4 Knows Where You're Looking

With the Samsung Galaxy S4's specs all but explicitly confirmed, it's time to clear the stage for software updates — and the latest comes from a Samsung employee who says the S4 would be able to track eye movement, so instead of having to cover part of the screen every time you need to scroll, the handset would pan across pages for you.

The demo on March 14 will be software-focused rather than hardware-based, much as HTC's One phone unveiling poured most of its time into introducing features such as the new Sense interface and Blinkfeed. The source at Samsung reportedly did not say anything about whether or not the eye-scrolling feature would be demonstrated at the Galaxy S4 event, but did emphasize that its software features will be more important than its hardware perks.

Evidence of this, The New York Times reports, lies in a European trademark filed in January for the name "Eye Scroll," and then in February in the United States for the "Samsung Eye Scroll," which described the feature as a "Computer application software having a feature of sensing eye movements and scrolling displays of mobile devices, namely, mobile phones, smartphones and tablet computers according to eye movements; digital cameras; mobile telephones; smartphones; tablet computers."

Another trademark, called "Eye Pause" was also filed, although Samsung did not provide further details about its purpose.

Samsung's Galaxy S3, the predecessor to this handset, already uses its front-facing camera to track user movements, keeping the screen lit when the user is looking at it instead of automatically dimming. The feature, called Smart Stay, used in tandem with the Eye Scroll, would allow users to expend even less energy than they did before, and if executed well, could be incredibly useful.

A problem may arise if it scrolls without prompting too often, which could easily be an annoyance. Some people can stare at a screen and use Eye Scroll properly, but others with short attention spans may look offscreen, then back again to a completely different page, at which point it would probably be more prudent to turn the feature off altogether.

A company called Tobii, which received $20 million in funding from Intel last year, has been working on using infrared sensors to track eye movements precisely, but whether or not it has teamed up with Samsung is unknown.

(Edited by Lois Heyman)