The Gesture Control We Want For Smartphones, Wearables Is Here

Several methods exist for getting you to stop touching your smartphone, but none actually get you away from physical interaction. From wearables to devices that check your eyes to see if you're looking at the screen, none completely get you away from touching the screen. Elliptic Labs might, though, with "multi layer interaction".

At first, multi layer interaction looks like something you've seen before. Move your hand toward the screen, and it comes alive with notifications. That's nothing new, being present on the Moto X 2014. Move closer, though, and those notifications act differently, perhaps even opening up to offer more information.

This multi layered approach uses ultrasonic technology, which Elliptical believes is a step above what's being offered now. They promise a true 180-degree field for their sensors, too.

This isn't necessarily new, but is the first time it's coming to fruition. Elliptic has been teasing this tech for some time, and working hard to slim it down — scaling down to scale up, so to speak.

As you can see via the video below, the promise is great, and the first we've seen to get your hands almost all the way off your phone. With a 180-degree field and a layered approach to how we interact with the devices, those cute things we take advantage of on current smartphones might actually be useful one day.

This could also be handy with those wearables that are already trying to get us away from smartphones. Gestures are important for a platform like Android Wear, but the small screen limits the options. If those gestures get a bit more useful by taking advantage of the space around the wearable, we like where Elliptic Labs is taking us with multi layer interactions.