I Used My Eyes Only to Control Honor’s Magic 6 Pro Phone. The Feel Was of Wizardry

Growing up in the 1990s, two major cultural icons for me were the TV illusionist Uri Geller, who could bend spoons, and the Matilda movie, which starred a young Mara Wilson and included her ability to make items hover. I thus believed that it would be possible for me to perform a miracle by focusing and intensely gazing at a target.

I never was able to make a spoon bend or a glass of water fall with my thoughts, but I didn’t give up entirely. It turns out that all I needed to do to get things moving was to focus and stare; Honor, a Chinese technology business, was the support I needed.

This week, Honor unveiled the Magic 6 Pro, their newest flagship phone, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It also demonstrated how to utilize the eye-tracking feature of the phone to move a full automobile using an app and remote controllers, all in addition to the announcement. Although I didn’t move any cars, I was able to use the Magic 6 Pro to test out the technology.

To get the phone to identify my eye movements, I first calibrated it. Setting up your biometric passcode on any of your devices is comparable to this process. It couldn’t have taken longer than ten seconds to complete the calibration. I was set to go until the Magic Capsule at the top of the phone’s display tracked my eyes as they moved around a dot on the screen.

The primary use of Honor’s eye-tracking technology is to open alerts, not to operate vehicles. The phone I was using was contacted by a pleasant man at the MWC Honor booth, and when I looked at a certain area in the upper left corner of the screen, I was instructed to answer. By focusing my eyes on a certain spot on the screen, I was also able to silence an alarm and access messages in the same manner. It was responsive, simple, and quick.

I can see how helpful this would be in my day-to-day activities. For instance, if I noticed a message arriving during a meeting and wanted to read it without appearing impolite by taking up my phone, or if I had a timer set while cooking that I wanted to turn off but my hands were coated in food.

Though these are really useful applications, let me just say how awesome it was to use Honor’s eye-tracking technology for a little while. After thirty-something years of my eyes being limited to seeing (not that I take that for granted), it seemed like my eyes had a whole new set of powers. It also occurred to me that incorporating eye-tracking technology into gadgets opens up new avenues for improved accessibility for individuals who might not be able to rely on touch for a variety of reasons.

For now, eye tracking is limited to Honor Magic 6 Pro models in China, so I’ll have to revert to attempting to mentally bend spoons. But because of Honor, I’m already eagerly anticipating the moment when interacting with my technology with my eyes will come as naturally to me as using my hands or voice.