As you know, I’m a pretty big skeptic when it comes to accelerometer-based applications. Not that I don’t think they’re cool, innovative, and fun. I do, I just don’t think they’re particularly practical, due to inconsistencies. I was so excited when ShakeLock came out, as I thought it was truly handy. However, when my mobile would lock and unlock itself continuously as I went up and down stairs, I realized that the current crop is going to need to be MUCH more intelligent before I’ll be sold on it.
At the Evening with S60 event in Boston a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Gene from KEYnetik, the company behind Rock-N-Scroll and Hi-N-Bye. Gene confronted me about accelerometer applications, and I honestly told him why I’m skeptical. After Gene demonstrated Hi-N-Bye on his N95 (by calling it from his iPhone, no less), I caved and told him I would honestly give it a run, and I’ve been using Hi-N-Bye on my N95-3 for the past couple of weeks.
First off, a little explanation of what it is that Hi-N-Bye does. As you might have guessed, it uses the built-in accelerometer on the N95-3, N82, and other S60-powered smartphones to answer your phone, hang up, and activate the loudspeaker or put callers on hold. When your phone rings, you raise it up as if you were (naturally) looking at the screen to see who it is. To answer the phone, you then move it directly up to your ear – without pressing any buttons. Hi-N-Bye detects the movement combination, and answers the call.
Similarly, if you look to see who it is, and then flip the phone over, it silences the ringer, and sends the caller on to voicemail – again, no buttons needed. Assuming you’ve answered the call, you can then move the phone back to being face-up, and either shake it forward/backwards or side-to-side to activate the loudspeaker or place the caller on hold (the movement can be assigned in the settings).
Gene shared with me that KEYnetik has spent quite a bit of time analyzing the various movements and had developed algorithms to detect and prevent false positives and negatives. This way, for example, if I answer a call and then slip the phone into a pocket and head to the stairs, the phone won’t activate and deactivate the speakerphone all the way up the stairs.
In practice, I was actually surprised to find Hi-N-Bye was indeed very accurate, and very responsive. There was not a single time when Hi-N-Bye neglected to answer a call, which was good to see. The biggest issue that I faced, when using Hi-N-Bye, was overcoming my own natural habits of answering the phone, and forgetting that my movements were now being translated into actions. I’m slowly but surely catching myself and remembering to just move the phone according to what I want done.
After a few weeks, I can confidently say that Hi-N-Bye is remaining installed on my N95-3 for the long haul. It’s very convenient to just pick the phone up and not worry about buttons, and the loudspeaker activation is just as handy.
Hi-N-Bye is available directly from the Symbian-Guru Store, which we recently launched. Remember, the grand opening discount code ‘SGuruOpen‘ is still valid up until June 30th, and will net you a hefty 20% discount off any title in the store! Click here to download Hi-N-Bye for your N95 or N82.
Also, as is the custom here on Symbian-Guru.com, we’ve reserved 5 free licenses to give away to you guys! All you need to do is leave a comment below and tell us something that you’d like to see the accelerometer used for, that there’s currently not an application for. That’s it! Get your creative juices flowing!
Update: Sorry, I forgot to put the end time/date for the giveaway. Please leave your comment/entry by midnight GMT-500 on Friday, June 27th.
