ZTE's insane, crowdsourced eye-tracking phone is called Hawkeye and is coming in September for $199
ZTE has announced that its long-awaited (by some) crowdsourced phone will go up for pre-order starting January 4 and will be delivered nine months later, in September, barring any unforeseen delays.
The device, born under ZTE's ambitious Project CSX, which stands for Crowd Source X, gleaned suggestions from people around the world, integration the two most viable into the finished product: eye-tracking navigation, and adhesive properties .
The former comes from an iris scanning camera on the front that, working with the Android software, scrolls up, down, left and right using decisive movements of the eyes. While this is not a new concept, ZTE says that it has improved the experience considerably: "The software interprets eye motion and replaces these gesture commands in any application that supports these standard Android commands." It appears, then, that the integration leverages Android's existing accessibility APIs, making compatibility fairly wide. For instances where eye-tracking is limiting — page-turning in a book, for instance — voice commands will replace hand touches.
