Nokia’s research scientists have released a video demonstrating their prototype mobile radar – a great way to claim “we did it first” credit without actually promising to deliver anything ever.  A heavily-modified N95 handset shows the system responding to user gestures, and even (intermittently) measuring the speed of moving objects.

There are obviously an array of options for this kind of hardware, especially in a Wii-ed up world where even the oldest user is aware of motion control.  This system is more like Microsoft’s Project Natal in that it’s based on a user’s movement being detected by stationary hardware. And in that it’s only being mentioned after the Wii proved there was interest.

The real difficulty in these systems isn’t in the hardware, however, but in the interface.  It has to be extremely cunningly designed to turn “move and something happens” into a smooth futuristic-feeling control, instead of an incredibly annoying randomly-turning-things-on-or-off machine.

The Nokia Conversations post is extremely careful not to even imply any definite use for this technology.  Some more miniaturisation is probably required (I’d be extremely surprised if that prototype was still able to do anything except use mobile radar), but as the smartphone market becomes increasingly crowded manufacturers must do anything they can to stand out.  We’ll definitely see some form of this hardware – the only question is when.