Nokia Turns Any Display Into A Touchscreen With "Plug And Touch"

I was prepared to be really disappointed by this video, but it actually looks kind of awesome. Basically you set up your Nokia N8 about five feet from any TV or display it can plug into via HDMI, and it uses its little camera to track your hands and turn the whole thing into a touchable surface. Brilliant! Well — maybe not brilliant, but certainly a cool feature. They call it Plug and Touch, which sounds vaguely… vulgar.

Right now, it’s still earlyish in development, so you can’t do stuff like use a full keyboard, draw, or anything like that. But you can control presentations and slide shows, press big buttons and launch applications — though why anyone would want a giant calculator is beyond me.

I think it’s more important that they’re establishing a touchless gesture-based control method for phone content — this will be more important in the future, I think. Anyway, if nothing else it’s a great way to show off your phone to friends.

[via Electronista]