There’s just a short time to go until the official product launch of the long-awaited Samsung Galaxy S4, and the rumors keep rolling in. Recently, the New York Times reported that Samsung’s new flagship phone is highly likely to feature “eye scrolling” – technology that tracks the movement of users’ eyes to determine where to scroll. Citing an anonymous Samsung employee, the newspaper said the software will detect when users have reached the bottom of a page and automatically proceed to the next paragraphs.

It may all sound like something from science fiction, but eye tracking systems have been in development for some time – for instance, the Galaxy S3 has a feature called “Smart Stay” that uses a front-facing camera to determine whether someone is looking at it and lights or dims the screen accordingly. Swedish hi-tech firm Tobii has been working on eye-controlled screens since at least 2008, and unveiled the world’s first eye-controlled arcade game in 2011.

Samsung filed a patent for a feature called “Eye Scroll” in January this year, as well as the as-yet-unexplained “Eye Pause” – which is widely expected to be a function that pauses videos when the user looks away from the screen. The Samsung employee told the New York Times that “overall, the software features of the new phone outweighed the importance of the hardware”. However, this isn’t to detract from the hardware – technology fans are expecting a great deal from what’s inside the S4.

So far, the smartphone is expected to run Samsung’s Exynos 5410 processor – an eight-core, 1.8GHz chips, although it’s uncertain whether this will apply to all versions of the device or if a somewhat cheaper processor will be substituted in certain markets. It’s believed the chip will be teamed up with 2GB of RAM, along with memory storage options ranging from 16GB to 64GB.

The S4’s screen is expected to be slightly larger than its predecessor’s, measuring 4.99 inches with a 1920 x 1080p HD resolution. It’s almost certain to come packing a 13-megapixel main camera, capable of shooting 1080p HD video, along with a 2.1-megapixel camera for video chat services.

The tech community is generally pretty good at getting an accurate estimate of a device’s specs well before they are officially announced. However, to get the definitive verdict we’ll have to wait until the New York launch of this long-awaited device on March 14th!