In a bid to survive cut throat competition, Apple is apparently toiling to bring back the long-lost magic by aiming to grace one of the upcoming iPhone units with an invisible backside button or slider. The Cupertino-based company was recently seen in the news for being granted a flurry of copyrights by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
One of these patents sanctions the iDevice to sport a key which seamlessly camouflages with the background. Now before jumping to conclusions, let’s clarify the fact that this news has drifted towards us through an unofficial source going by the name Patently Apple.
According to the post, the buttons on the device will remain hidden by default for as long as users don’t feel the need to utilize them. With an intention to remain invisible, this key has apparently been sculpted with the same material that’s used for the handset’s casing. From what can be gathered, it can be illuminated whenever someone taps or clicks the button.
This doesn’t mean that owners will have to blindly hunt the back surface for it. The key can also get activated upon witnessing heat, sound or motion of fingers on the panel. Similarly, the slider too will stay invisible until it is needed. The report moreover points out that these controls can be applied to a number of functions.
In fact it has elaborated the matter by stating that just like iTunes is responsible for controlling dedicated functions, the invisible contextual keys can be assigned tasks like deactivating a camera or ejecting a disk. The company purportedly has plans to extend this functionality to other devices which feature the patent as well.
Since the button can supposedly perform any activity allocated to it, the post says that it should be capable enough to replace all conventional buttons and track pads on a MacBook. Remote and gaming controllers are also among the gadgets on which the conglomerate wishes to plant this functionality.
Nevertheless, it seems quite unlikely that this feature will be arriving anytime soon and Apple may have ruled out the iPhone 5S from this inclusion. Speaking of which, the shipments of the smartphone could have been pushed further ahead than expected, owing to certain issues with a fingerprint sensor and a plausible iOS 7 platform.