“Apple Inc. has won a patent for a cell phone ‘accessory detector’ that helps battle dropped calls. The accessory detector has two functions. It supposedly ensures that the various different radios on cell phones don’t interfere with each other,” Ben Charny reports for Dow Jone Newswires. “In addition, it also supposedly ensures that devices attached to phones also don’t cause any interference or dropped calls.”
“‘There is a need for techniques that ensure the integrity of the wireless communication with a mobile device when an accessory is coupled with the mobile device,’ Apple wrote in its patent application,” Charny reports.
Charny reports, “The detector is supposedly compatible with a wide variety of different products that Apple doesn’t now manufacture: remote controllers, global positioning system (GPS) devices and wireless handheld gaming devices.”
Charny reports, “The technology’s broad application is raising speculation that Apple will license the new mobile-focused software to manufacturers, thus providing a potentially lucrative source of revenue and a boost to its stock price.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “harrison” for the heads up.]
I could see Apple getting into the accessory market for cell phones now… and it would be big.
How many times has hell frozen over because of Apple?
Supposedly. Supposedly. Supposedly.
It reads like the guy hated writing the article.
“How many times has hell frozen over because of Apple?”
It’s gotten so bad that Cerebrus is now a rock hard, three-headed dogsicle.
The bastard! If they have won a patent, then they would have won not on supposed facts but on actual facts! that is what the patent application system is there for. To check & cross check, to test and approve then to issue a patent on the basis that no one else has or is in the process of having a similar application in existence or pending thorugh the system.
Supposed! Where do they produce such incompetent reporters from?
You mean Cerberus {grrrroooooowwwllll}
You mean Cerberus {grrrroooooowwwllll}
You mean Cerberus {grrrroooooowwwllll}
as “Benton Harbor” used to say ….
“It’s everywhere ! .. It’s everywhere !”
{re: Apple}
iPhone is the new accessory market. People bitch about the iPhone not having GPS, yet it will be a tidy add-on that you plug into the bottom of the phone and barely be noticeable.
@ Crabapple
These guys are BBC rejects.
Yes, I meant Cerberus. Woof, woof, woof.
@coolfactor
From what I understand E911 legislation has created a system where many Cell chips already have GPS functionality built in. A software update might be all that is necessary.
I also understand that there is a method that cell phones can use even without GPS to triangulate their position from cell towers to within 100 feet.
So there probably won’t be any plugging into the bottom happening on your iPhone any time soon.
@ Someone Else.
That explains it! The BBC should enrol all its rejects into a charm school. That should re-align their thinking!
It looks like GPS will be a plug-in module for the iPhone, rather than waiting for v2.0. I look forward to plug in batteries and RAM drives.
Well it would certainly be cool if my powerbook could detect the iPhone as an wifi accessory and get me online no matter where I’m at.
Guess thats another story though…
Shogun, I’m glad you brought this up. I just spent the morning looking into this…
AT&T/Cingular does not use GPS. Instead, they use U-TDOA. This is basically a triangulation method based off of the cell towers. A signal is sent out, various towers receive it and record the amount of time that the signal took and where it came from. This information is forwarded to a controller which takes the information from the towers and triangulates to determine where you are.
The accuracy is within the FCC’s requirement of 50-300 meters–164 to 984 feet. But that’s not impressively accurate–my bike GPS is, at worst, accurate to within 100 feet and customarily within 45 feet. U-TDOA’s accuracy is dependent on the number of cell phone towers, electronic interference, signal strength, etc. But it is guaranteed to be within 164-984 feet (as mandated by the FCC). AT&T/Cingular have gotten better than the FCC mandate, but not reliably.
It also requires you to “place a call”–you have to send out a signal for the triangulation to work. It is not a passive system like GPS.
So a system like AT&T/Cingular’s would work fine for “Where’s the closest seafood restaurant?” as the iPhone ad showed. The iPhone would get it’s position (within 164 feet) from the AT&T/Cingular network and use that.
On the other hand, driving directions might be difficult in a city because I’m not sure that you could get your present location accurately enough (“are you on 1st street or 2nd street?”) It could still work, but the first direction might be “Get to 2nd street from wherever you are. From there, go north 2 miles…”
Finally, using it as a GPS would probably eat your battery because your phone would be continuously “talking” with the network. So expect your battery life to be about equal to your talk time. Obviously, there are some polling tricks you can use (eg, if you appear to be standing still, slow down the queries, query based on speed so that you don’t query within the margin of error, etc.) but it probably wouldn’t help all that much. Also, I’m not sure what AT&T’s network would do when 1000s of people starting sending messages saying “Where am I?” every second or so. Remember that this stuff was set up for E911 Wireless service.
I haven’t heard of any cellular chips with built-in GPS. It’s usually another chipset. Nokia is adding GPS chips to it’s phones, but that’s mostly for mapping. If your phone has a GPS chip and you use AT&T/Cingular’s network, the network will still use U-TDOA (though Nokia’s built-in software will use the GPS chip).
“….thus providing a potentially lucrative source of revenue and a boost to its stock price.”…
Thank Goodness, something is needed to help the AAPL stock price, it has been so doggy lately….
@ Peter
Great info, thank you for writing that up.
All I want is a reasonably accurate You Are Here button. That would be awesome.
I just had thoughts of mapping my mountain bike trails as a layer right on Google Maps…
I really think… we haven’t even begun to invent uses for this thing.
(“are you on 1st street or 2nd street?”)
agreed, this could be a problem. however, if you were moving, multiple querries might allow the algorthm to error correct and increase its accuracy.
stunt speculation, really, but theoretcally possible
Apple stock just keeps going through the roof, the funny thing is most people are aware of this, it is just that their hardware is so expensive that most of the would-be shareholders are simply investors and have real stake in the company like all of us users on the forums do, anyway, my two cents.
Americo
http://ThunkDifferent.om
Uh, Apple DOES manufacture a remote control that comes with new MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs, AppleTVs, etc.
iPhone will be a gaming device, as it will be able to play games that iPods can now play.
We don’t know whether iPhone is a GPS device yet; it very well could have an additional chipset built in for this purpose.
I bet firms like Sonnet are already working hard on developing ‘matching’ battery packs for the iPhone.
“I just had thoughts of mapping my mountain bike trails as a layer right on Google Maps…”
If you have a GPS, you can do that. There’s a little app called LoadMyTracks which will download the data off your GPS in a KML format, suitable for Google Earth. I used this with my Garmin Edge 205 while I waited for Garmin’s Training Center to be released.
By the way, has anybody noticed that Garmin’s software sucks?
Apple iPhone Accessories Shipping Before iPhone Release!!
Check out the full story at
http://iprodreviews.blogspot.com/2007/06/apple-iphone-accessories-shipping.html
or visit
http://iprodreviews.blogspot.com
He must have rolled his eyes after every sentence
I know that this is way off topic here, but with all of the talk of E911 and GPS, does anyone know if the iPhone will be able to be bugged like the RAZR is. The FBI has been able to use built-in bugs inside of every RAZR phone to listen in on conversations, even when the RAZR is powered off.
They have successfully busted some Mafia characters by taping regular person to person conversations while the phone was powered off. Not that I do anything illegal, but still I was just wondering if this is something that will be on the iPhone too. Maybe it will eventually be on all phones. I don’t know.