Another set of innovation that Samsung introduces in the Galaxy S4 is the ability to interact without touching the phone. To list a few:
- Air View: information appears when you hover your finger over the screen.
- Air Gesture: Quick glance, Air jump, Air browse, Air move, Air call-accept.
- Motion: Direct Call, Smart alert, Tilt Zoom, Pan, Turn over mute
- Smart screen: Smart stay, Smart rotation, Smart pause, Smart scroll
Some of the functions are rather useful, but here's the issue: not all works on apps.
- Air jump and Air browse: swipe your hands over the air and scroll the web page or photos. Only works on stock browser, stock gallery app.
- Air View: works on stock Messaging, Email, Calendar, Contact, Gallery. Also works with Flipboard, surprisingly. I find this the most useful touch-free feature as lots of apps support this feature compare to the rest.
- Smart stay: works on stock Video Player. While it sounds useful, this feature becomes an irritant when many people are watching the video. Often, the feature fails to detect a face among the people and then it would pause playback.
Fortunately, you can easily enable and disable the gesture features via the dropdown menu.
My verdict: the touch free features are not deal-breakers, but they might help you interact with the phone when you don't want to touch your phone with your soiled hands.
Labels: Android, Phone, Review, Tech
