If a late granted letters patent makes it into the Apple Watch — and they often don’t — then a future gimmick may be able to mechanically color - coordinate with any banding or even your clothing or supplement .
Thepatent , filed in July of 2021 and just granted on August 22 , 2023 , describes ways in which a time to come Apple Watch might be capable to change the color of its face to correspond your dance band , or almost anything else .
For official Apple watch bands , the twist ( the Apple Watch ) could identify exactly which band you have , touch the display to it from a predetermined list . But for non - official bands , or indeedany other objectlike your wearable , handbag , jewelry , or accessory Apple has a more advanced method in store .
The patent draw a wanton detector behind the display ( like the ambient wanton sensing element on today ’s Apple Watches ) . You would hold your Apple Watch face up to the object you want to quantify ( your tie , for instance ) , and the display would cycle through breathe a serial of specific colors while the light sensor amount how much luminance is reflected back to it . An algorithm pieces together that information to determine the accurate coloration .
But that ’s not all ! Apple even describes using the capacitive showing to aid influence thematerialof what you ’re measure . This piece from the letters patent is specially interesting :
In addition to or instead of gather drug user stimulation to determine the appropriate algorithm for determining the color of external object , control circuitry may habituate a sensor to help assort international aim and identify an appropriate algorithm for determining its color . For deterrent example , speck sensing element may gather capacitive information while target is hold over the display . This capacitive entropy may be indicative of the type of material that target is made of fabric with different dielectric constants will raise different responses from touch sensor
material with a relatively in high spirits dielectric constant such as metal may result in a eminent capacitive reading from signature sensor than material with a comparatively low dielectric constant quantity such as textile . After determining the case of material that target is made from ground on the capacitive detector datum from touch sensor , control circuitry may select which algorithm to use based on the case of material and/or may otherwise narrow down the potential termination that an algorithm may produce establish on the type of material .
In other Word , dissimilar materials involve different algorithms to correctly determine their semblance . So the capacitive exhibit may be able to define if a surface is material , leather , metal , charge plate , or something else by measuring the resistance on the capacitive touch screen held against it . You could imagine this also being used in the resulting watch face ; match a alloy objective , and get a scout human face with a faux - metal lustre to it , for case .
It is unclear if this engineering is potential using just the ambient light sensor that currently exists on Apple Watches under the OLED presentation . But we ’d like to remind our readers that Apple register for and is granted patent all the time that never make it into any ware . This feature article may never come to go by , or it may be enabled by a future watchOS update , potentially special to specific Apple Watch example .
Read about thenext Apple Watch , coming in September 2023 .
