Core77

Q: How to Get Rid of the iPhone's Home Button and Increase Screen Size? A: Create a "Squeezable" iPhone

By Rain Noe - March 8, 2013

in UX

Are the Home button's days numbered?

Are the Home button's days numbered?

Apple notoriously applies for tons of patents, very few of which will make it into actual products. This one is interesting from a UI perspective.

You could argue either way, but let's say it's an ergonomic necessity to have an easy-to-locate Home button, as now exists on the iPhone. That button cuts into screen real estate. Is there a way for Apple to get rid of it, growing the screen, while still somehow offering the Home button's functionality?

The answer may lie in a patent Apple has secured involving the measuring of electrical capacitance of the body of a product. As an example, if this were incorporated in an all-screen iPhone, the user could simply squeeze the phone's housing as a means of input. That doesn't mean the body of the phone itself would have to deform; it just means that the phone's body would register the change in capacitance coming from a squeeze, and would turn that into some sort of command. Software would sort out whether the squeeze was purposeful or accidental.

Apple Insider is speculating that the technology mentioned in the patent, which was granted several years ago, may pop up in the forthcoming iWatch.

o

Favorite This
Q
5

Comment

Comments

dimitrios

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

The patent was filed in 2009 and granted on 5 March 2013. The sensors measure the deflection of a metallic surface. From a UI perspective, it actually works as a large side button.
!Report as spam
bar

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Or just, I dunno, place the home button underneath the phone.
!Report as spam
James Patrick

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Why not put the home button on the edge of the phone like Droids have done all along(not the first though)? They might as well use the feature; it's not like any one iPhone feature was actually an Apple invention.
!Report as spam
Nathan

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Meanwhile, on an interstellar colony ship fifty-some years in the future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZRVy1QAROo
!Report as spam
Kaggy

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Apple is really always the first to patent something without ever having it.
http://gizmodo.com/5948163/grip+based-phone-interface-lets-you-squeeze-to-tap
!Report as spam