“Future iterations of the iPhone could very well support sophisticated embedded heart sensors to monitor the user’s heart,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
Cardiac sensors would “record such data for future identification purposes when making banking transactions or protecting highly sensitive documents or data,” Purcher reports. “This will play a part of a future patent report due later this month.”
Purcher reports, “Today’s patent further confirms that a future iPhone will indeed support a pico or pico-like projector.”
Much more in the full article, including Apple’s patent application illustrations, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
It’s amazing what people think up.
Cool article on the day I saw my 1st baby’s heartbeat at our first sonogram!
Wouldn’t work with Ballmer. He hasn’t got one.
This might work except that heartbeats may have changes over a day. Or arrhythmias might have an effect. This is not fingerprints.
Sounds like something invented without a contribution from a cardiologist.
Or to be used with Nike plus to monitor heart rate during exercise.
Patent everything including a heartbeat and then let’s see if patent trolls get another piece of the Apple ever again.
Wonderful.
If you jailbreak your iPhone or it’s determined your dead grandmother’s grandmother downloaded an mp3 the blackshirts haven’t “approved,” they’ll stop your heart.
The “sensing” part of this seems an excellent feature … for some folk. The suggestion that it could be used for biometrics security is, as LeftCoastDude suggested, not entirely realistic. Could it be useful? Most certainly! At the very least, some old fart (my age) could feel some discomfort in his chest and get a near-instant diagnosis from a local heart specialist. Or, at least, record the event for when the specialist gets off the golf course.
DLMeyer,
We’ll be using our iPhones and the last thing we’ll see is our heart stopping on our Watch Yourself Die App™.
I really don’t get how they are going to power a pico inside the phone. I have a p2 from aaxa ( http://www.aaxatech.com/products/p2_pico_projector.htm ) with a battery dedicated to powering the projector. It’s awesome but with the battery it still only lasts 90 minutes. Are they trying to set the world record for making a cellphone battery die as fast as possible? Or is this a plan for the year 3000?
A fart recognition App would be next then!
You could never make everyone happy. Biometrics is the future. The problem is people freakout at the thought of fingerprint or retina scanners and so a heart sensor is less threatening a means to verify individuality. It’s definitely individualistic in nature, so kudos to Apple for testing it out. For an executive, this may very well fly.
With teens, on the other hand, forget about it. Just give them the spit-ometer. They’ll be able to clean their iPhone display and have their DNA verify who they are.
Creepy
LIES! Stupid idea!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com