Microsoft may go after Amazon with hands-free zooming

Look mum, no hands!

Future Windows Phone handsets may be less reliant on physical inputs.

Dynamic Perspective looks to be a big selling point of the Amazon Fire Phone, but Microsoft seems to be exploring some hands-free technology of its own.
A recently uncovered Microsoft patent describes a system whereby the content displayed to a user changes depending on how far away the device is from their eyes.
The obvious application of that is for hands-free zooming, so if you want to zoom in on an image for example then rather than pinching or double tapping the screen you'd simply bring the phone closer to your face, while holding it further away would zoom out.

Now this is just a patent so it may not make it into a finished product and even if it does it would be some way off the level of hands-free control that Dynamic Perspective gives you, but it might just be one piece of the picture.

Fire bait

We've already heard rumours that there's a Windows Phone handset codenamed McLaren in development which apparently features Kinect-like motion controls, allowing users to interact with games and applications without touching the screen thanks to an array of motion and proximity sensors.
Now that really does sound like an alternative to Dynamic Perspective and if Microsoft is planning on putting this hands-free zooming concept into a phone then McLaren would be the ideal candidate and with the handset expected to ship later this year Amazon might have some serious competition before long.