Google Pixel 4 “Motion Sense” gestures detailed in new leak

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The Project Soli radar in the Google Pixel 4 series is probably going to end up as one of the main selling points for the two phones. The precision radar opens up new ways to interact with the devices. The gestures remind me of the LG G8 ThinQ’s hand gestures or the Samsung Galaxy S4‘s gestures, but hopefully, they’re way better. Google confirmed that the gestures will be called Motion Sense and that you can skip songs, snooze alarms, and silence phone calls, but thanks to a new leak, we’re learning more about these gestures.

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A leak from M. Brandon Lee, Host of YouTube Channel ‘This is Tech Today,” details a bunch of the gestures enabled by the Project Soli radar. Specifically, we can actually see the settings pages for the gestures on an actual Pixel 4 smartphone. The first gesture under the “Quick Gestures” section of the Motion Sense settings is to skip songs. This will allow you to wave your hand left or right near the phone to skip or rewind songs. The next gesture is to silence interruptions. This will let you snooze alarms or silence calls just by waving your hand over the phone.

The last of the features shown here is for the ambient display. It seems like the gesture will allow you to enable it automatically when you’re nearby. The radar will sense when you are reaching for the phone or are near it and only then will it show the ambient display. According to M. Brandon Lee, “This allows you to have your phone on a table and you can just hover your hand over your phone and it’ll essentially display your lock screen. You can check the time, notifications, and other info.”

On paper, Motion Sense might seem like a gimmicky feature, and it might end up being that. There are some usability aspects of Motion Sense that could actually be useful, though. For example, when Google officially confirmed Project Soli and Face Unlock, they mentioned that the Project Soli radar will be able to recognize when you are about to pick up your phone and only then start scanning for your face. We might know some of what Google is doing, but there is definitely more to come.

M. Brandon Lee has shared a couple of more photos of the Pixel 4 that he obtained from his source. They’re fairly high quality and show off the bezels and sides in more detail. In case you haven’t seen the numerous leaks this week, his video does a good job recapping what’s been going on, including many of our own findings. You can watch the full video at the link below.

So far, Soli gestures are confirmed to work in the U.S, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and most of Europe. If you live in one of these countries and are thinking about getting the Pixel 4, are you looking forward to the Motion Sense gestures?