Samsung has launched a smartphone which allows users to control its 5in (12.5cm) screen using only their eyes.The Galaxy S4 follows on from last year’s S3, a product that sold over 40 million units worldwide. At a lavish, Broadway-themed event in New York, the company also demonstrated the phone’s ability to take two different pictures at once. Analysts widely regard Samsung to be the biggest challenger to Apple’s dominance of mobile products. The Galaxy S4 will be rolled out globally at the end of April.

Through a series of role-playing scenes, the South Korean firm demonstrated the phone’s key features.Much was made of the device’s ability to be controlled without touching it.Using “Smart pause”, the user can pause a video by looking away from the screen. Additionally, the “Smart Scroll” software analyses the user’s eyes and wrist to scroll through emails and other content.

The dual camera feature makes use of the device’s front and rear cameras simultaneously, blending the pictures together to make sure the picture taker is not “left out”. The rear has a 13 megapixel camera, while the user-facing camera captures pictures at 2 megapixels. The phone weighs 130g, and is 7.9mm thick - making it slightly lighter and thinner than the S3. The device uses Samsung’s HD AMOLED technology, giving the S4’s screen - which is marginally bigger than the S3’s - a resolution of 441 pixels-per-inch.

As well as the “touchless” technology, the company also introduced the Samsung Hub - a multimedia storage facility that can be shared across multiple Samsung devices. (BBC)