Samsung has officially sent out invites for a Samsung Unpacked event on Thursday, March 14th at Radio City Music Hall, where the company is expected to unveil the Galaxy S IV smartphone.
Multiple reports have surfaced that the new Android-based smartphone will have eye-tracking software and hardware that will allow users to scroll through web pages and perhaps perform other tasks simply by moving their eyes.
Citing an anonymous Samsung spokesman, the New York Times yesterday reported that the technology would be included in the phone but did not say whether the technology would be demonstrated at next week’s event.
The Times went on to cite a European patent filing by Samsung called the “Eye Scroll” (No. 011510674), which was then filed in the United States. According to the filing, the patent is a piece of 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.”
For fans of the company’s products, Samsung launch events have in recent months taken on the excitement of past Apple unveilings.
In the fourth quarter of 2012, Gartner reports that Apple and Samsung together raised their worldwide smartphone market share to 52 percent from 46.4 percent in the third quarter of 2012. Samsung ended the year in the No. 1 position, in both worldwide smartphone sales and overall mobile phone sales.