A mobile that will operate with gaze of an eye

HELSINKI - In the not so distant future you would only need to look at your spectacles intently to read your mobile messages or watch a video clip, apart from making the basic phone call.

Finnish mobile technology giant, the $50-billion Nokia, is working on a gizmo in which an eye gaze is the critical factor. You look intently at a message or at a video icon and they would open right in front of your eyes.

“We are working on a mobile that operates with the gaze of an eye,” Jyri Huopaniemi, director with Nokia’s research centre, told a IANS correspondent during a visit to the company’s headquarters in the Finnish capital.

Called the Gaze Tracker, a prototype of this cutting-edge technology product is on display at the company’s lounge in a gargantuan atrium that does justice to the impressive glass façade.

“One only needs to wear this, put on an arm band and place the ear piece in the ear. Then, you would be able to read the messages in the Gaze Tracker,” explained Marika Gallar who works in the lounge, showing the gizmo to this correspondent.

“This mobile phone needs to be calibrated to your eye so that it reads your eye movements,” she said. She did not say when the device would hit the market. “I don’t know,” she said cryptically, refusing to divulge any more confidential business information.

She said people all over the world, gizmo lovers or otherwise, eagerly look forward to mobile phone developments at Nokia. “People just love it,” she said with a smile.

The Nokia lounge not only shows early products, including an obese handset that was among the first to hit the market and cost a small fortune to the latest offerings that are state-of-the-art and have excellent sound and picture quality.

Officials here are impressed with the growth of the Indian mobile phone market. “We know you add some 20 million new connections every month - that is four times our population,” said a senior executive.

India is the second largest market for Nokia after China.

(Rahul Dass can be reached at rahul.d@ians.in)