“On May 09, 2013, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals one of the next chapters for Apple’s iPhone,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“Today’s patent reveals an innovative concept that is designed to help users control their incoming calls and voicemail by simply swiping their finger over the external camera lens,” Purcher reports. “It will control replay and fast forwarding of voicemail. In addition, the new methodology will also enhance one handed navigation of web pages, documents, a contact list or your iTunes library by simply swiping the camera lens in different swiping motion combinations.”
Purcher reports, “The majority of this patent was first reported on back in February 2010 under the title ‘Cool New Finger Swiping Camera Controls coming to iPhone & iPad.’ You can obtain more details and patent graphics from that report. Apple is adding one distinct addition to their original invention by adding general page scrolling.”
Read more in the full article here.
Soooooo … basically the same stuff that Samsung rushed to market in the S4? Meaning that if/when Apple implements this, it’ll cause an uproar of “Apple copying market leader Samsung” and all that lovely-smelling analyst/blogger/ignoramus fecal matter? Wonderful!
Seriously, though. Good to see that Apple’s been working on this for more than 3 years. Hopefully it’ll perform way better than the competition’s equivalent.
like doc mentioned, Apple has a patent for this since 2010 but Samsung is using it. Hmmm.
I’d much rather that a new iPhone design employ touch sensitivity around the Apple logo on the iPhone’s back. Some case makers already put a window over the logo (the Otter Defender, for example) and prefer keeping the window over the camera lens scratch and smudge free will be easier if routinely touching it is unnecessary.
That was in 2010 and still not here today. Very little can be gained by looking at vaguely defined patents.