Samsung was in the news today with word of a patent application for a gesture-based mobile phone interface.
The system uses the phone’s camera (ala GestureTek) to track hand motions as an interface alternative to the now (almost) ubiquitous touchscreen. As the picture below shows, Samsung has defined a number of specific hand gestures to activate pointers, perform mouse clicks and switch through and among layers on the screen.

Two interesting things come to mind as we look at this. First — and we haven’t seen the patent application itself yet — is where this patent might fit into the constellation of motion control patents already out there. We suspect that more than one company may feel this butts up against some existing IP.

Second, the gestures themselves seem to be a bit elaborate. One knock against motion control that we’ve heard time and time again — from folks not familiar with the technology — is ” won’t it be too hard for my mom/grandma/kids/etc. to use”. We’ve found that most motion controlled applications are easier to use than traditional interfaces (think about all the senior centers with Wiis), but this system seems like it will require more than just intuitive “pointing” to operate.

Obviously this is all well before even pre-production, but we’ll be keeping an eye out here to see what the final product (if any) is going to look like.

Via GigaOM.