ForcePhone could let you control your phone with a squeeze

OREANDA-NEWS. May 30, 2016. Imagine controlling your phone with a simple squeeze -- going back a page on Safari or calling your significant other. It seems like a small development, but small refinements like this, when gathered together in a cohesive user interface, are what distinguish the intuitive from the clunky. At least, that's the idea for a group of engineers from the University of Michigan, according to SlashGear.

ForcePhone, a technology being developed now, is doing exactly that. Here's how it works: the speaker on your phone emits a tone that is way beyond the human ear's capacity to hear. The mobile device's microphone picks up that high-frequency tone. The key is, when you squeeze the phone, it modulates the tone slightly, which the ForcePhone software can analyze and convert into commands.

For many bleeding-edge enthusiasts, the prospect of new types of interactions with our phones has to be exciting, but it's unclear whether the squeezes this technology registers might also mean a lot more accidental phone calls. Most importantly, the question of whether manufacturers will see the potential in implementing ForcePhone software remains open.