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Apple Exploring Smart Bezel with Illuminated Buttons

Simply awesome!

This might be the right direction... I was always a bit wary of the larger LCD screen claims.. I'm sure they would want the same resolution and pixel density, so making a larger screen didn't seem like a good idea.. but with this.. I think is just a great idea. As long as they don't make it cheesy.
 
kdarling said:
(Hey, Apple, want to really change the world? Invent a phone that can always take super steady and focused video, and save us all from the YouTube shakes.)
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Impossible if you shake. It isn't the phone. My wife can barely achieve "stable" with her Panny camera, and that has excellent optical stabilization which no thin phone will ever have.

Why do I think someone already has patents on this? A remote control mfgr, perhaps?
 
I consider this "flair" (think office space) and unnecessary for Apple.

Maybe they can incorporate it in a different way, we'll see.
 
Meandmunch said:
I thought iPhone 5 rumors were pointing towards no bezel along the side edges of the screen. This patent contradicts that, just saying.
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It doesn't contradict it. It just doesn't indicate it in this patent drawing.
 
Do this on the rim and it would be amazing. Replace the physical volume buttons with user configurable touch screen light up guys. Set the buttons wherever you like. Game developers could add shoulder buttons for their games.

The back button could appear beside the mic / camera rather than require a navigation bar that takes up space on screen.
 
pkson said:
Simply awesome!

This might be the right direction... I was always a bit wary of the larger LCD screen claims.. I'm sure they would want the same resolution and pixel density, so making a larger screen didn't seem like a good idea.. but with this.. I think is just a great idea. As long as they don't make it cheesy.
Click to expand...

I agree, this is a very good idea but only IF it's done well. Of course, if anyone can do a good user interface, it's Apple.

The whole front surface of the phone, ideally, should be 'live' and offer some utility. It's quite a trick to pull off, though. Gotta really sweat the details. And if Apple can achieve it, everyone else will copy it.
 
Surprised

I'm surprised there isn't a stronger positive reaction about this. Think of the potential, and the viewing real estate you compromise when having to place your finger over it.

Scrolling on the sides - that just seems natural.

Notifications on the upper right, illuminating subtly.

Playing games with controls on bezel - so you don't take away gameplay real-estate.

Etc, etc, etc...
 
The reasoning behind embedding these indicators in the bezel itself is to provide the user visual instruction or guidance without taking up valuable screen real estate.
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If this patent is true, I highly doubt it will ever see the light of day. Apple was the one who removed all the hokey lights and buttons from the whole phone paradigm. The screen can show anything, it's virtual. No need for any additional clutter. Now they are going to put lights and buttons back on to the phone and make it more complicated? I call B.S. Never gonna happen.
 
Sounds like ... an Android phone! I really don't see Apple doing this. It's something they've purposely avoided all along. Jobs seems to favor the simplicity of the single home button.
 
One cannot infer anything from a patent application about Apple's product roadmap. Most of Apple's patents never make it to release.

Apple makes dozens, if not hundreds of prototypes for every new device and only one design wins. Apple will patent everything they can, even if they don't intend to market it.

Even if they do, they don't need to release it in the exact manner it was illustrated in the patent.

This patent filing is meaningless in regard to the next generation iDevice. The only thing we can infer from this is that if anyone else tries doing this, they will be hearing from Apple's intellectual property attorneys.
 
solarthecat said:
If you think about it, the icons that are visible within all of Apple's Apps and the IOS software all of the time on the iPhone are: Signal Strength, Mobile Network, Wifi, Time and Battery Life.

This information would best be placed in the bezel. It would also then be possible to monitor your battery life when playing a game (very few games have any of this information visible because they prefer to utilize the entire screen so that your are immersed. One of the reasons is because the screen is not really as big as it could be.

Hopefully the screen will be extended wider to the edge of the bezel in the iPhone 5. And what a waste of space that pesky round home button is. Once you have woken your phone using the lock button everything else could be done with gestures alone - and the lock puts it back to sleep. Lets ditch the home button!

Instead we can have a small neat row of secondary icons along the base of the phone. These would signify number of missed calls, voicemails, unread sms messages, notifications. Now i dont even need to turn my phone on as picking it up (or shaking it) would illuminate the secondary icons giving me visual feedback of the time, date and any calls or messages I may have missed and i can even see if the phone is low on power too without using more power to turn on a retina display screen. :D
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Windows Phone 7 does a good job of hiding the signal strength etc unless it's needed. That gives a little more useful screen real estate.

Conversely, my Palm Pixi has no home button, and being required to go to the power button each time I want to activate it is a pain.
 
jouster said:
Windows Phone 7 does a good job of hiding the signal strength etc unless it's needed. That gives a little more useful screen real estate.

Conversely, my Palm Pixi has no home button, and being required to go to the power button each time I want to activate it is a pain.
Click to expand...

This can be done on application level in iOS.
 
An interesting idea, and while some component of this may appear in some implementation or another it's not highly likely that the entire idea will manifest exactly as patented.

Ultimately, final approval on any such feature is still Steve's, and he would err on the side of simplicity. But, it may lead to a more refined feature in either iPhone or another product line that uses the best part of this concept.
 
Already been done by HP

The HP Touchsmart printers have what they call the "Magic Bezel", where extra buttons show up when needed, such as for going back a screen, canceling printing, a home button and so on.

However knowing how Apple does things, they most likely will take the experience to the next level.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

Meandmunch said:
I thought iPhone 5 rumors were pointing towards no bezel along the side edges of the screen. This patent contradicts that, just saying.
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If you read the article on patently apple, you'll find that this patent was filed before the ipad even existed.
A patent application doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to use the idea right away.
 
jouster said:
I'd prefer a smaller bezel too, but if they're going to start using non-screen areas for presenting information, I hope they also make them interactive. That works very well in WebOS.

Edit: wasn't there some talk a while back about using this sort of thing for notifications?
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Correct, and WebOS does that already by default, and to a great extent with homebrew. It's done quite well, and the since the phone was built with that in mind it looks wonderful.

I don't think the iPhone will get that anytime soon though. That device just wasn't built for anything outside of the screen.

kdarling said:
Reminds me a bit of the rotating buttons on the Incredible S.
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I remember when I first saw that and I was like: "DUDE that rocks!!"

2 Replies said:
So much for clean and simple form-factor. :rolleyes:
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Right. It'd be nice, but I don't see the iPhone being a device that will every get better notifications than blasting a message in your face in the middle of the screen. WebOS and Android have gotten Apple beat on that so far.
 
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