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Hover me digits! Nokia bringing touchless zooming and panning to Lumias

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By Daniel Petrov

Published: Sep 27, 2013, 7:31 AM

Hover me digits! Nokia bringing touchless zooming and panning to Lumias

Nokia already introduced a hovering gesture in Lumias running the Amber update, where a simple pointing with your finger close to the display wakes it up from the Glance Screen mode, but now it is taking the feature to the next level. It patented two more ways for touchless interaction with its Windows Phone devices, and we wouldn't be surprised to see those hitting Lumias soon:

Hover based Text / object enlargement while reading or UI interaction. The letter or part of the word you hover on will get enlarged making it easy to read. This will also help in rendering touch inputs more easily.

Hover base handling of text input and icons. There will be three modes while using the keyboard to input text and once hover is done, the user enters into Zoom-pan mode from normal mode, where the part of text under hover gets zoomed in and also the text panning takes place based on movement of the hand. As soon as one touches the screen the device enters into pointing mode and hover interaction ceases. It may make text input really a breeze.

source: EuropeanPatentOffice (1) (2) via NokiaPowerUser

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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena from 2010 to 2025, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.