An intriguing Apple patent application published today describes how the Touch ID home button could gain additional functionality, allowing it to perform different actions in response to different fingerprints, as well as adding pressure sensors to provide it with 3D Touch type functionality.
The patent goes into a great deal of detail about the technology, with little information as to what it might be used for, but Apple does give a couple of clues. One use of different fingerprints described is to allow someone else to use your iPhone or iPad, but restrict their access to particular apps and for a limited time. The obvious application here would be allowing a child to use only specific apps and/or limit the time they are allowed to use a device …
For example, when the processor matches the fingerprint information against a known fingerprint from an authorized user, the processor can take one or more actions in response thereto. In a first such case, the processor can authorize usage of a device for an individual procedure, for a sequence of procedures, for a selected time duration, until a trigger indicating that the user is no longer authorized, or until the user de-authorizes the device.
A previous Apple patent described how a specific finger could be used to activate a ‘panic button’ feature.
Pressure sensors could also determine what the device does when unlocked, for example immediately opening a particular application when unlocked with a hard press. The home button could also be used to control apps once unlocked.
The user can have a different effect presented in response to a relatively soft touch, in contrast with a relatively hard touch. For a second example, the user can have a different effect presented based on an analog measure of applied force, such as an attempt to turn a dial or wheel, or push or turn a joystick, in a gaming application.
The patent describes ways for the unit to detect not only the amount of pressure applied, but also the direction of that pressure, suggesting that it could act as a kind of joystick.
However, it also goes beyond talk of a home button and seemingly describes how the principles could also be applied to a trackpad to allow many more gestures than currently supported.
A gesture, fingerprint, or applied force may be performed by moving one or more fingers or other objects in a particular manner on touch I/O device 1006 such as tapping, pressing, rocking, scrubbing, twisting, changing orientation, pressing with varying pressure and the like at essentially the same time, contiguously, or consecutively. A gesture, fingerprint, or applied force may be characterized by, but is not limited to a pinching, sliding, swiping, rotating, flexing, dragging, or tapping motion between or with any other finger or fingers. A single gesture may be performed with one or more hands, by one or more users, or any combination thereof.
The patent also references ‘near touch’ gestures, the topic of a separate Apple patent granted earlier this week.
You’re of course familiar with our usual disclaimer that there is no way to predict which of Apple’s patents will ever make it into production, but there are certainly some really interesting ideas in this one.
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Love the disclaimer!
We need Touch ID to be embedded into the display. Crazy technologies are probably required but it is possible.
It will allow Apple to get rid of the home button.
Apple has patents for Touch ID for being in the Apple logo on the back or embedded into the screen.
Curious how a clickable/swipeable bottom bezel like the top part of the Siri remote would work on an iPhone as a home button replacement.
Yea, that was my first idea for “removing home”. I think ideally touch Id would be in the screen but this mockup is what I was thinking if they where to keep the home function in the traditional spot.
There has to be bezels for now but if they removed the physical button (which needed a big circular cut out) they could make the entire bottom bezel a force clickable area. I liked the idea that with out the touch ID ring they could return to the traditional home button icon etched under the glass.
I also thought they could just move the home button to the side, like an apple watch, if touch ID was in the screen. Then people could choke their grip up higher on the phone since they wouldn’t need to reach all the way to the bottom for a common function.
Home button on the side makes sense on a watch, it does not make sense on a phone. Assuming you use logical reasoning. The most embarrassing mockup I’ve seen so far, in regards to anything about any Apple device, was the mockup with a Digital Crown on the side of an iPhone (a very close second was a mockup of an Apple Watch with a headphone jack). I felt bad for humanity when I saw that actually. It really drives home the fact that only people of the highest intelligence should be making any decisions.
I think they should go back to square edge front, and 2D glass, take the screen edge-to-edge, and reduce the top and bottom bezels to their maximum (the point just before the corners of the phone begin to curve). That leaves approximately 1/2″ of top and bottom bezel on the phone. This is room for the sensors and camera to be in a single line on the top bezel, and on the bottom bezel, I’d not cut out a physical home button, but I’d put a round indent seamlessly into the glass for the initial tactile differentiation to give a user feedback that they are in the home button spot. I’d use 3D Touch, albeit it much improved 3D Touch to replace physical home button functionality.
Smoothies, I don’t think I understand what benefit you see from removing the curved glass and bezels on the sides.
The curved glass feels nicer and It makes doing edge gestures feel nicer – and with the new 3d touch multitasking gesture it doesn’t seem like that interaction is going to go away.
It would involve some serious engineering feats too. There isn’t a whole lot of space on the sides to do this: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/2jQSTlSF1PIojnsV.huge
There is maybe only one phones doing this right now. The Oppo r7 5.5 phone. But it isn’t even doing true edge to edge display. They are using light refraction (with curved glass actually) to make the illusion of no bezels: http://www.gsmarena.com/video_shows_how_the_oppo_r7_pulls_off_its_bezelless_trick-news-11967.php
It would look really really cool – no doubt. But with no functional benefit aside from making the phone ever so slightly less wide, I don’t see why Apple would do this.
Lastly, they aren’t hinting at this anywhere else in their product design. All other products have pretty modest bezels and they don’t really seem to be pushing it to harder. Apple already achieved the goal of having extra screen space in less width with the apple watch. It still has big bezles… it just can have a smaller screen since the black oled blends with the bezes and visual padding that would have been in UI is now physical padding. This makes sense for the small screen of the watch. It doesn’t make sense for the iphone sized screens.
@Greg You don’t see the benefit? The device could have its width reduced massively, about 5/16″. By far, the most important bezels to reduce are the side bezels, as these are the bezels that govern how far across the screen your thumb can reach. Reducing the side bezels to nothing, would be fundamentally great for usability.
The curved glass looks cool, and it feels nice, especially for forward and backward gestures, but most users know nothing about that, as they have a case which completely eliminates their ability to feel the curve. I’m not sure what you mean by with the new multitasking gesture. That is a peek/pop gesture, for people unaware. Press hard on the edge, do not move your finger, if you press hard enough, multitasking pops out, you don’t need to slide your finger over. Moreover, with a curved edge your finger is much more likely to slip over the edge when you try to press the edge, so no, a flat glass would be best for that gesture.
It involves the same engineering that reducing the top and bottom do, which is internal space, your mistake is thinking that they can’t make the battery more narrow and long, or narrow the logic board.
The ‘functional benefit’ is far greater here than anything else they could do to the device, physically.
Hinting at this in other products is completely irrelevant. Did they hint at Touch ID in other products before the iPhone? More importantly, you wouldn’t do this to an iPad, and while you would do it to an Apple Watch, it wasn’t feasible for that, as they needed the internal space…
Hey smoothies. Is it really fair to say a full 5/16ths is counting against your ability to reach across the screen? Only the bezel on the side that your thumb is on effects your ability to reach the opposite side of the screen. That’s at most a 4mm change (less than 1/2 centimeter). It’s really not that much relative to the space that could possibly be cut from the top and bottom before the screen is an issue.
But I’m confused by how much priority your putting on width when it seems like most people complain about the height. I don’t worry about either since 4s was designed for humans to use ; ]
That said, the 3.5″ screen is dead but the 4″ is coming back. The 4″ has the same width as the 3.5″ so no issue reaching that. Now I just need them to reduce the bottom bezel so the 4″ screen is as comfortable to reach the top of as my 4s is. I’d much rather Apple focus on reducing height since it would benefit the most people.
While I think the bottom bezel for home is the best transition for users, I disagree with you about the home button moving to the side as that stupid of an idea or somehow making more sense on the watch. With a phone you allready have it kinda squeezed from both sides and when holding it naturally to just look at the display your thumb rests more confortably on the side than it does stretching down to the bottom bezel. The lock button is certainly easier to reach than if they kept it on the top edge, no?
Reduction is reduction so whatever. I’m not trying to say it wouldn’t matter or help and maybe on the wider iphones that makes more of a difference. But yea. I’d far rather they focus on height.
Greg, both sides matter for thumb reach. Your fingers stretch across the back and curve to hold the phone. Not sure what you don’t get about the more narrow the further your reach. The more narrow the device, the further down your palm it rests, and thus, your thumb reaches further across the screen. Rest your phone on your fingers, now imagine it was narrow enough for your fingers to wrap around the side so you could hold it like that, observe how much reach your thumb would have.
What I don’t get is who is having a problem reaching across to any UI when everyone else seems to have issue with the height.
The phone is much longer than wide and the thumb only reaches a 1/4 circle radius from the origin. Making it more narrow would help a little to reach something that was 45 degrees or lower from the origin but it doesn’t matter how wide it is past that radius if it’s too high. If the screen were square I think I’d understand more.
Do you hold it left or right handed? What are you even trying to reach?
Haha Greg… first of all, horizontal is an issue with the iPhone Plus, but that isn’t my point anyway. Yes, the iPhone Plus is too big a screen to use one-handed no matter what, but a narrower device = farther thumb reach, I don’t know how it is hard to understand. The further down your palm the phone rests, the further your thumb can reach, and the wider the phone, the further up your palm it rests, because you need your fingers to be able to reach around the back. Its the same reason why a thinner phone allows for more thumb reach. It’s hard to explain, I guess, but a very simple concept.
Anyway, the only comfortably one-handed display is a 4-4.3″ display. I am 100% with them on making a smaller phone.
I’d make it a 4.3″ display, reduce the bezels more, and put iPhone 7 specs and release it then, but that just me. And no, nothing about the size of the device holds it back from iphone 7 specs, sorry to inform. It would have less battery (marginally), and it would be thicker, but being thicker is fine because it’s such a small device.
I wonder if Apple is planning to have a Home button that doesn’t actually move (like the force touch trackpad)? It would be easier to make an iPhone waterproof without a moving button, plus would remove a possible point of failure in iPhones.
Think of it this way, what a shop a bank and enterprise can do with this kind of tech, it’s easy really to see where apple is going with Touch ID
you know, this patent doesn’t really exclude the idea of it being embedded in the screen does it?
reverse the thought of “adding pressure sensors to provide it with 3D Touch type functionality.” to “adding touch id functionality with a screen that already has 3d touch and force sensors” and you have something faaaaar more interesting.
Imagine a light force touch to wake the display and “peek” at information, this could authenticate so it could show your, possibly sensitive, notifications on the lock screen. Then a harder press would “pop” you either directly to home or to the application your thumb was over. It’s peek and pop but as an entry point into the OS vs into an app or app content..
This in the current home button under the screen would make much less sense. It would have no context so you could only configure two possible outcomes for actions vs any possible action based on the context of where your finger is on the screen.
imagine still lock screen complications that you could press to jump to an app like the apple watch.
Maybe this is just common cover-your-ass speak in patents, but this sounds like, “Hey you know that image that looks like a home button? it might not literally be that.”
Yeah, that’s pretty standard patenteze. “We might think of other stuff later and we want that to be covered too.”
I think the bottom end of the iPhone, instead of just one round button at the center with the left and right of it wasted, could become a strip the stretches across the bottom end to become an Apple TV type “touchpad.” Giving the phone home button far more functionality, Cursor control when typing , touch id mouse functions such as the old blackberry trackball. Additional gaming and app controls that do not cover the screen with your finger.
Man this is just so exciting! I mean combine this with the multi user functions in 9.3 and suddenly you have an ipad or mac (if they put touch id into the trackpad) that can unlock directly to your user, bypassing any kind of user selection screen. And if it’s unrecognized it defaults to the mac or ios device’s guest user.
Imagine another common use case is someone with an iphone they use for work and home where they could have different homescreen setups and settings for a work fingerprint and another for a home fingerprint.
I think this could go a step further in the whole water/dust proofing thing that’s been floating around as well. With a force sensitive home button, there’s really no need to have it physically move. It could essentially be like a mini 3D Touch trackpad on the bottom of the phone, acting like a traditional home button, digital crown type navigation tool (keep your screen entirely visible), joystick for games, etc. This could, really, be a hugely enticing feature for future phones. I’m not sure how far off the technology is for building Touch ID in to a screen, but until it’s ready, I think this type of home button is a natural evolution.