One of the new features of the Galaxy S4 is its ability to track your head and eyes. It knows when you are looking at the screen and it can tell when you look away. This feature is implemented when watching movies and video clips. If you are watching something and look away, the video pauses and only restarts when you look back at the screen. It is automatic and the eye tracking feature means that you will never miss a second of the video.
Picture this though, a video containing adverts. When the advert comes onto the screen you cannot look away. If you try to avoid the advert the video will pause until you look back at the screen. The eye tracking feature forces you to watch adverts and there is no way of circumventing them! Advertisers must love this feature - a captive audience that is unable to avoid sitting through an advert and watching every single second. Every frame of the advert must be watched and there is no way to escape the advertiser's message. Try to avoid it and it stops until you come back and give it your undivided attention.
Eye/head tracking is a silly feature that is pointless and most likely irritating. I must admit I have yet to try it, but just thinking about it is enough to see the pitfalls. Sometimes I want to look away to see what's happening around me, or to focus on something else to avoid straining my eyes - I can't stare at the screen for an hour without looking away. But I don't want the video to stop.
I like to watch music videos and concerts on YouTube. Not just the three minute variety, but sometimes half an hour or maybe more. If you have eye/head tracking then every time you look away the music will stop because the video is paused. This is the opposite of what you want. While watching a concert you want the music to continue even if you look away for a second or two, otherwise it would spoil the entertainment.
It's not just music concerts, but movies, news programmes and other things often have two people talking. You can look away for a moment or two without watching because it's just two talking heads. You haven't missed anything by looking away and you can continue to listen to the conversation without your eyes glued to the screen.
This is a feature I would turn off because the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. It's an optional setting, so it is nothing to be concerned about and on the whole I think the Samsung Galaxy S4 is a brilliant new phone that is better than most rivals.
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