Now you can control your cellphone using a magnet

Researchers have developed a new technique that makes it possible to control a cellphone with moving a magnet around or near it.

Experts at Deutsche Telekom (DT) in Berlin, Germany, have come up with a software that tracks changes to the magnetic field around a cellphone to identify different gestures by a hand holding or wearing a magnet.

The MagiTact lets user turn the pages of an on-screen document by moving their hand right to left while a sharp patting motion 10 to 20 centimetres above a device's screen can terminate a call, New Scientist reported.

DT researcher Hamed Ketabdar said: "Current methods of interaction are usually restricted by the physical boundaries of the device...The idea is to develop a way to interact with mobile devices through more natural human gestures."

Christian Holz at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, added: "Devices are getting smaller and so eventually it may be impossible to interact with them through touch. To take the interaction space off the actual device seems very reasonable because that gives you so much more space and you don't occlude the screen anymore."

The findings were presented at International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces in Hong Kong, China.