I've seen it a few times around here where people ask something like
"Are there any games or applications that respond to movement for my phone?" Generally the phones they have aren't equipped with an accelerometer and therefore do not support those games. Although, there is one game that I've known about for ~5 months now called
3D Lawn Darts that responds to movement of the phone by using the camera. About a year ago, I also remember NetFront creating a concept of a browser that allowed you to navigate the web just by rotating and moving your phone in the direction you wanted the page to move.
Since then I've been really interested in this technology, but I haven't been able to find much about it until now. I came across a company online that developed the tools needed for applications to be able to use the camera as if it were an accelerometer. The company is called
GestureTek and the technology is called the
EyeMobile Engine.
They've been around since mid 2006 and I have no idea how they aren't more popular. There is a lot of interest in this area, especially for people that don't have motion-sensing phones. Since 2006 there have been a number of
games and applications using their engine created for the specific use of camera-detected movement.
Unfortunately the list of supported phones is quite sparse, and several of the applications are either only offered by certain service providers or they're integrated into only certain phones. Although, if you could find them out there, I have a feeling they might work on your phone.
Happy searching, and let us know if you find anything!
On a side note, I believe this technology is quite similar to how Micro$oft will incorporate gesture recognition into their Windows Mobile 7 OS (using the camera rather than an accelerometer). That's great news for those of us who don't have the high-tech stuff built in yet. Too bad the scheduled release date is reportedly not until the second half of 2009 (more likely 2010).