Apple Patents a Self-Adjusting User Interface for One-Handed Use
Potentially saving millions of phones from being dropped onto the floor.
While Steve Jobs would be rolling in his grave if he could see the monstrous size of your standard smartphone today, a newly published patent filed by Apple in late 2014 — around the debut of the iPhone 6 — shows the company’s designs for a smart user interface that would adjust itself for more ergonomic one-handed use.
Using information gathered from the side antennas, pressure sensors, the in-built gyroscope, as well as the orientation of the user’s fingerprint when using the TouchID sensor, the patent would allow the iPhone to dynamically shift navigational buttons on the screen to either side or the bottom to better accommodate which hand you’re using, as well as where the phone is being held. The phone would also automatically switch to one-handed keyboards for ease of typing on the go. Past data about how the user holds the phone would further back up the phone’s UI behavior.
While Apple has already attempted to accommodate for one-handed use with features such as Reachability, that shifts the entire screen downwards, this patent signals an innovative new design approach that would lead to much more fluid user interfaces that require minimal input from the user. Hold your breath for these features in the upcoming iPhone 7.
