11 new Samsung trademarks include Nudge: new touchless control feature for the Samsung Galaxy S6?
Samsung loaded the United States Patents and Trademark Office up with a whopping 11 new patents recently. Many of them aren’t interesting or new — particularly entrants from the recently-launched Galaxy A lineup, the rumored Samsung Galaxy E5 and E7, and the rumored Samsung Galaxy Grand Max — but there’s enough new here to pique our interests.
What we do get is a lineup of “J” smartphones that are numbered similarly to Samsung’s other lone letter lineups (Samsung Galaxy J3, J5 and J7), as well as a newly-revealed Samsung Galaxy E3 that could round out the E-series we’re expecting Samsung to introduce.
Beyond all that, there’s one interesting new trademark that caught our eye more than anything — Samsung Nudge. This particular trademark has a description that tells of “software used for capturing gesture, facial, and voice recognition for the touchless control of other computer applications, computers, phones, smartwatches, and other mobile and multimedia devices.”
Unfortunately it doesn’t offer any more insight than that, though these trademarks often don’t. It sounds like Samsung could be whipping up a big new touchless control feature for a forthcoming TouchWiz upgrade.
The company already uses gestures and facial recognition to some degree in existing smartphones, and we all know about Samsung’s own take on Google Now and Siri commands with S Voice, but this trademark could signify we’ll see a robust new take on it that combines all three elements for a comprehensive touchless control experience rivaled only by Motorola. Should that happen we wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung wants to highlight it as a centerpiece feature in their smartphones.
Will it be something we see introduced with the Samsung Galaxy S6 at Mobile World Congress next month? Your guess is as good as ours, but we’ll be all ears to find out for ourselves once Samsung shows us their first goods for 2015.