Apple Patents Additional iOS Interface Gestures

Apple has applied to patent more powerful touch-based gestures in iOS devices with smaller touchscreens. The said technologies also involve sensing the device’s position and angle, and will manipulate data and images with these gestures.

Touchscreens are among Apple’s favorites when it comes to user interface. Touching elements on a device is more intuitive than pressing buttons or moving a mouse cursor around. Unfortunately, with limited screen sizes, a user is also limited in terms of manipulating the data from within. We already have pinch and zoom gestures on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, with which we can manipulate images and data on these iOS devices. However, Apple wants to further improve this gesture-based touchscreen experience.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has published a few patents that Apple has recently applied for, and these include two technologies for manipulating images and data on a touchscreen surface with gestures. These include “Hold then Swipe,” “Swipe Then Hold,” displaying more visual data, and the use of the accelerometer.

The two hold and swipe patents mean that single-finger touch gestures will become more powerful than just dragging elements around and panning the screen. With these features, a user can manipulate a photo or image onscreen in terms of zooming in, panning, and even changing view angles without lifting one’s finger.

When a user swipes and then holds the finger in position, the speed of panning or flipping through content can be changed by angling the smartphone or iDevice left or right. Holding a finger in position can also bring up a context menu or an additional screen with more information about the element being manipulated. In the same way, the hold-then-swipe gesture can be used to bring up additional information about the item being manipulated. One example could include touching a person’s face in a photo, and then iOS showing other pictures of the same person stored in the device.

On the other hand, the new patent also takes better advantage of a device’s accelerometer in manipulating content. Tilting an iPhone, iPad or iPod left or right might be useful when flipping through photos, music albums and the like.

Even bigger applications of these new touch-based gestures include displaying related items depending on context. For instance, touching and holding on a certain landmark in an online map can bring up a set of photos for that particular area. Apple has yet to integrate these technologies into their actual product, and so these are mainly concepts that might see their way into real devices soon. As such, Apple is likely to be able to integrate these in a seamless and intuitive manner with existing iOS user interface elements.

Read: Apple Patents Additional iOS Interface Gestures ["Hold Then Swipe" & "Swipe Then Hold" Provides More Powerful Way of Manipulating Photos on iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch] | TFTS 

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