In a bid to fancy the opinion of its customers, ZTE launched a smartphone crowd-sourcing project couple months ago. Called the ‘CSX Project’, the company wanted users to float ideas — simplistic or bizzare — for a smartphone they’d like the company to build and launch in 2017.
Well, ZTE has today announed that the user-submitted ‘eye-tracking self-adhesive’ smartphone has emerged as the winner of the crowd-sourcing competition, with over 36 per cent of the votes. It was trailed by the phone design that was accompanied with an intelligent cover — much like Moto Mods!? and the stock Android smartphone — who doesn’t want one!?
Eye-tracking and self-adhesive capabilities might not be the most bizzare concepts for a crowd-sourced phone, but we could have expected something even more innovative. Samsung has already tried including eye-tracking functionality into their phones for turning off display and pausing video when you’re not looking at the screen. Let’s take a brief look at what one should expect from this device, launching in 2017.
The winning design, described in detail on ZTE’s forum page, is expected to feature a premium unibody metal design with a large bezel-less 5.5-inch 4K LCD display. The top and bottom chins, though will pack in a pair of eye-tracking cameras, will be trimmed and pretty narrow. The internal specs have also been defined by the user on his forum page, but the final decision depends on ZTE.
The smartphone will focus on security, and run on the latest flavor of Android Nougat to provide a seamless, updated experience to users. There is currently no word on pricing, but the design could come in four color variants — Battleship Grey, Big Dip’o Ruby, Blue and Apple Green, and Amaranth Pink. Impressive!!
Coming to the innovative solutions that enticed customers to pick this over other design submissions includes eye-tracking and self-adhesive back cover. The eye-tacking system will utilise the two front-facing cameras to follow the movement of user’s eyes, specifically the pupils. Using this feature, you can automatically scroll through webpages or PDF files without having to move your head up and down regularly.
The user who submitted this design believes that eye-tracking is a pretty neat addition but will only work perfectly when the phone is held stable, not in a shaky hand. Thus, the use of self-adhesive polymers on the back case comes into picture. You will be able to temporarily stick the device against walls, railings or any other stable surface to provide the needed stability for eye-tracking.
In addition, the display might also packs in a split screen design — sepearated left and right light components — that will only display information to the person sitting in front of the display. This dual directional-viewing LCD makes the phone a tad bit secure from snooping friends and relatives, who’ll only see a static background image from an oblique angle. This could be seriously fun to test out, if implemented.
Now that the world has told us what they want ZTE to build, we are entering the product development phase of Project CSX . However, the crowdsourcing element may not be completely over, as we look to continue to keep consumers at the forefront of everything we do – in this case, helping to determine the official device name to determining the product colors and more,
stated Jeff Yee, senior VP of technology planning & partnerships of ZTE USA.
