Wave Control For Android Is A Touchless Music Controller For Your Smartphone

Now, when you play "Can't Touch This" on your smartphone, you can actually do so without having to touch this.

Wave Control is a new app for Android (spotted by Lifehacker) that uses your Android phone's front-facing camera to let you manipulate your phone's music player with a wave of your hands. By gesturing in front of the camera's sensor, you can instruct your phone to play or pause your music, go to the next song, or go to the previous song.

Each command corresponds to a separate gesture, outlined in the handy tutorial video below:

Wave Control runs in the background while you go about your business and still works when the screen is locked. It works with any app that has "media button" controls; on our (excellent) HTC One S, we got it to work on the stock movie player, Google Music, and Spotify. The controls worked mostly as advertised, though getting to a previous song is a bit tricky.

Wave Control comes in two flavors: A free, ad-supported version (available here) and a Pro version for $0.99, which gets rid of the ads (available here).

We've seen a couple other cool, futuristic touchless controls for your gadgets recently. You might remember Flutter, an app for Mac, that allows for a similar kind of gesture-based control of your music player on your Apple desktop or laptop; Sony also teased us with its forthcoming Xperia sola, a smartphone that will allow for "hover browsing" (that is, you can hold your finger over the screen in order to pre-select what you're going to tap).

There is also, of course, an entire wave of gesture control televisions available now, including Samsung's Smart TV and any television hooked up to an Xbox Kinect. Both of those products allow its users to play, pause, rewind, fast forward, and control the content on the screen by moving their hands before a front-facing sensor.

There is also, of course, Tobii, which does away with your hands altogether and allows you to control machines -- including an Asteroids arcade game and a desktop running Windows 8 -- by following where your eyes are looking.

Perhaps that -- eye control -- is next for the smartphone. For now, however you'll have to satisfy yourself with skipping from "Touch Me" by The Doors to, say, "Don't Touch Me" by Busta Rhymes using nothing but a quick gesture in front of your phone's camera. You can grab Wave Control for your own Android phone in the Google Play store, for free or for a dollar.

Also on HuffPost:

Google's Project Glass prototype offers a glimpse at the direction hands-free tech may be headed. Take a look at this sleek-looking piece of wearable gadget (below).

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• <a href="https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts" target="_hplink">All images courtesy of Project Glass on Google+</a>.

• <a href="https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts" target="_hplink">Image courtesy of Project Glass on Google+</a>.

• <a href="https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts" target="_hplink">Image courtesy of Project Glass on Google+</a>.

• <a href="https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts" target="_hplink">Image courtesy of Project Glass on Google+</a>.

• <a href="https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts" target="_hplink">Image courtesy of Project Glass on Google+</a>.

• Google's Original 'Project Glass' Concept Video

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Comments

[jonathanexp]

12:21 AM on 04/21/2012

Cool, but find no point...takes more energy to wave your hand lol

[Nanpon]

06:16 PM on 04/20/2012

One would expect Google to buy over this company like Apple did to Siri.

[Joshua J Kautzman]

05:38 PM on 04/20/2012

I love this for driving in the car and listening to Google Music. Cool players like PowerAmp let you swipe to change songs, but to access my cloud music, I need to use Google Play Music player. With WaveControl, I get both :)

[dblueII]

03:03 PM on 04/20/2012

"ksjncdhw9erd(*h8(*9p*y9He9)

Know what that is? An approximation of the three or four texts that my android sends out a day without my touching it. Oh, and I just love when pandora starts playing in my pocket. I'm sure this would be a big help.

Back to the drawing board, I'm getting an ianythingbutgoogle product next time.

[IfIonlyknew]

03:46 AM on 04/22/2012

Have you tried closing you touch screen when you have your phone in your pocket.

[IfIonlyknew]

10:05 AM on 04/22/2012

Do you have an otter box case??

[stormbringer56]

01:58 PM on 04/20/2012

cool toy i installed on my htc works pretty good for what it is