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50c9c023-dd89-4624-a0eb-52f589e30e08Microsoft wants to make it easier for people to control their phones without having to touch the screen.

The company launched a new Gestures app in beta today for Lumia handsets running Windows Phone 8 that allows users to move their phone to perform certain functions, rather than tapping on its screen.

The gestures all seem fairly natural. A user who picks up a ringing phone and puts it to their ear will answer a call. Once the call is active, they can set the phone down  face up on a flat surface, and it will put the call on speakerphone. Flip the phone over on a flat surface, and it will mute the microphone but keep the speakerphone active. If the phone is ringing and you don’t want to answer it, flip it face-down to silence the ringer.

Here’s a video that shows how it works:

There’s still plenty of space for more gestures to come, too. Some of my suggestions: stare longingly into the phone for more than a minute, and it will call your crush. Pitch it across the room, and it’ll hang up the call and block calls from that number for a couple hours. Drop a Lumia off a building, and it’ll order a new iPhone for you on the way down.

That last one would be perfect for people like noted Microsoft blogger Ed Bott, who dumped his Lumia Icon for an iPhone 6 Plus last week because the Microsoft device has yet to receive the Windows Phone 8.1 update.



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