What Can We Expect For The iPhone : Patent Watching
There is a long tradition between Apple fanboys to speculate or discover product developments and novelties by watching FCC fillings and Apple patent applications. I've looked into recent patent news to see what we can expect in the future.
Speech-to-Text
With the 3GS Apple introduced speech recognition, it's relatively limited for now and allows you to control your iPhone with voice, but it seems like Apple has bigger plans for Voice Control. The idea Apple patented would allow you to input text using your voice, by simply pushing a button that would appear on top of your keyboard.
I've never had much success with voice recognition (I always have huge problems with those automated answering machines, you say "Customer Support" and you hear "You said "shipping department""), but if they can get it to work well it would be a big step forward, especially for those who don't feel comfortable using the on-screen keyboard.
Video headset display
Another Patent that Apple was recently granted is an iPhone/iPod compatible video headset. There are already some on the market, but the ones I had the chance to try clearly didn't make the cut. Maybe Apple could get it right ?
Full Screen iPod (or iTablet?)
Those sketches look very similar to the ones we saw right before the announcement of the iPhone, we called it the iPod video back then. The idea is to maximize the screen surface and get rid of the home button. I wouldn't complain if I got a couple extra inches of screen right ? The device looks also pretty sleek to me. But this could just be the iTablet...
Integrated Sync
Having your calendar, emails or contacts synced over the cloud is industry standard nowadays, however when you start watching a show on your iPhone, say on the bus, and you wanna finish it on your laptop later when you get home, it gets complicated. Normally you would have to sync your iPhone with iTunes and even then it's often pretty cranky. The latest patent from Apple suggest that they would be introducing a system that would allow you to have all your media and their current lecture status synced over the cloud, just like your contacts or your calendar.
Speculating on patents is risky and I wouldn't vouch for those but it definitely gives us a good idea of what's happening in the industry and what the future could be made of.
If you're interested in Apple patents and innovation I strongly recommend you check out Patently Apple.
[via Patently Apple]