Movement gestures in iPhone OS 4.0 or 5.0?

Staska  By on 02 Apr 09

If you think about it, the accelerometer  that was in the iPhone from the very beginning,  haven’t been put to a good use by Apple’s programmers.

Sure, it helps to switch between landscape and portrait orientations. And some game developers are having a blast with it.

But as far as the iPhone operation and the native interface goes, the help from the accelerometer remains very limited. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Wouldn’t it be cool to add some movement gestures, so you can skip to the next song with a shake of your hand? The thing Sony Ericsson has been doing for years.

Or to move to the next page with a little tilting?

Well, it seems that Apple is at least exploring new possibilities the addition of movement gestures might bring to the iPhone. And that’s what their patent application called “Movement-based interfaces for personal media device” is about.

iphone-movement-gestures

To tell the truth, after reading this patent app I am not actually sure what is there to patent. Most of the things, gestures and techniques described are pretty obvious and/or already implemented by others. But that is Apple’s IP lawyers headache.

I  would be more interested  in seeing the movement gestures seamlessly integrated in the UI in iPhone OS 4.0 or 5.0 release.

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  • http://www.cypher-sec.org thecolor

    This is great, except… movement gestures require more memory (human) since I'd suspect most would “gesture” the screen from view or simply so fast the screen is unviewable, leaving you guessing (until it happens) if the gesture actually worked. Kinda like saying “call Jon” and the device guessing if you said “jon” or “mom”. — did you mean to shake up-upright-down or up-up-down? ;)

    I think it's a great concept, but something that may only work well with a camera (so you don't have to move the device)… or so it would seem from this sketch/concept/idea. No?

    The motion gesture:
    http://www.unwiredview.com/2008/01/08/first-gli…
    is the way to go.

    It's funny Nokia has “patenented” the above since this guy has had it around for a while:
    http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/09/12/samir…

    Does he work for Nokia, 'cause I've used HandWave for a bit now and love it! (on my N95 8GB)

  • http://www.cypher-sec.org thecolor

    This is great, except… movement gestures require more memory (human) since I'd suspect most would “gesture” the screen from view or simply so fast the screen is unviewable, leaving you guessing (until it happens) if the gesture actually worked. Kinda like saying “call Jon” and the device guessing if you said “jon” or “mom”. — did you mean to shake up-upright-down or up-up-down? ;)

    I think it's a great concept, but something that may only work well with a camera (so you don't have to move the device)… or so it would seem from this sketch/concept/idea. No?

    The motion gesture:
    http://www.unwiredview.com/2008/01/08/first-gli…
    is the way to go.

    It's funny Nokia has “patenented” the above since this guy has had it around for a while:
    http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/09/12/samir…

    Does he work for Nokia, 'cause I've used HandWave for a bit now and love it! (on my N95 8GB)

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