Google wants to kickstart Project Soli interest with a new Soli Sandbox app
by Jared Peters
Google launched the Pixel 4 with Project Soli, which theoretically opened up the door to a lot of interesting apps and uses. Google debuted Motion Sense to control your phone hands-free, and Pokemon Go played around with the tech, but… that’s pretty much it.
We haven’t seen anyone really do anything with the extra hardware in the Pixel 4. You can argue up and down about how cool it is, and you’d be right, but at the end of the day it’s really not getting used.
Project Soli Sandbox
Google is likely very painfully aware of how underutilized one of the only unique features of the Pixel 4 is, so they’re introducing Soli Sandbox. The point behind this new sandbox app is to hopefully give developers a little spur to start making apps that take advantage of the hardware.
If you’re building an app for the Pixel 4, this means you can take advantage of all the touchless swipes, taps, and other gestures that Soli implements. On the other side of that, you probably aren’t building an app specifically for the Pixel 4, since Google hasn’t sold very many of them and word on the street is these gestures and excess hardware will be going away when the Pixel 5 comes out. Makes it hard to want to invest much time and effort into something so temporary.
But hey, if you want to try your hand at building off of Project Soli, give it a spin!