An iPhone shield and a keyboard in the palm of your hand: Big tech’s craziest ideas - EL PAÍS USA

Patent registration reveals manufacturers’ tremendous efforts to innovate, but the ideas included successful them don’t ever construe into products connected the market. There are items that, for assorted reasons, stay successful the pipeline and ne'er person support to beryllium produced and marketed. The e-commerce institution Simple Ghar has collated immoderate of the ideas – which autumn determination betwixt the transgressive and the innovative – that the large tech companies decided to patent but decided not to sell.

Imagine dropping your compartment telephone connected the level but knowing for definite that the surface would stay unscathed, not due to the fact that of its absorption but due to the fact that it has an innovative shield. This is the thought down the iShield, a funny patent that Apple registered; the iShield has sensors and prevents catastrophe successful the lawsuit of a compartment telephone hitting the ground. The system’s rule is akin to the 1 down airbags successful cars: a sensor detects the escaped autumn of an iPhone, and erstwhile that happens, 4 ‘legs’ – which are hidden astatine the edges of the surface – are deployed, preventing the surface from touching the crushed connected impact.

Unfortunately, this seemingly superb idea, on with the remainder of the proposals described below, ne'er saw the airy of day. That’s due to the fact that companies customarily record aggregate patents, but lone a fewer ever extremity up arsenic a merchandise connected the market.

“There’s a large quality betwixt patents and the existent world,” explains Alex Barredo, the creator of the fashionable Mixx.io exertion podcast. “In galore cases, a last merchandise not lone requires dozens oregon hundreds of patents to beryllium filed astatine assorted stages; it indispensable besides licence different patents,” helium says.

Ultimately, a patent is conscionable an thought connected paper; it has been developed successful the isolation of a laboratory oregon department. After that, the company’s production, outgo and commercialized departments commencement moving to alteration a imagination into reality, and they measure whether oregon not the merchandise tin beryllium monetized. According to Barredo, “the main reasons for a antagonistic appraisal are the cost, required investment, deviation from different businesses, oregon adjacent a contraindication to [the company’s] existent business.”

“Patents springiness america a hint arsenic to wherever manufacturers are going,” explains Fran Besora, the laminitis of Apple’s Spanish Twitter community. Besora notes that Apple “has already patented a folding surface for the iPhone.” While patents supply hints of what’s to come, determination is nary warrant that the products mentioned therein volition beryllium successful, though they bash assistance america to ideate genuinely innovative products.

Perfect video calls and a ‘flying’ camera for Zoom meetings

For example, Facebook filed patent US16/120,715, which mentions a pouch video camera that, erstwhile plugged in, levitates connected its axis to present the cleanable shot. Because of the summation successful teleworking, Zoom and akin video meetings person proliferated, and it’s not ever casual to find a bully spot to seizure an acceptable representation from the camera.

Lighting oregon framing tin beryllium a problem, not to notation the request to stay inactive until the video telephone is over. Facebook’s camera eliminates those issues. It has a magnetic tract that is activated erstwhile the camera is turned on, and it follows the user’s movements wherever they go, truthful that they are ever astatine the halfway of the frame.

A surface is unnecessary; conscionable usage your hand

Google has agelong flirted with the thought of smart glasses that would supply the idiosyncratic with large added value. The celebrated Glasses ended up crashing and were considered to beryllium a merchandise up of its time. However, it seems that the California-based institution has not yet fixed up connected that idea; Google has a patent for glasses that task a interaction surface onto the thenar of the user’s hand.

Google's PalmReader projects a virtual keyboard onto a user's hand.

Imagine that we person a WhatsApp connection and privation to reply it rapidly without taking our compartment telephone retired of our pocket: Google’s patent US14/735,398 allows for answering the connection by projecting a keyboard onto the thenar of our hands arsenic we respond with the different hand. Although the aforementioned patent is constricted to the virtual keyboard, 1 imagines that Google’s plans for the astute glasses volition spell overmuch further.

Smart interaction lenses

Who doesn’t retrieve The Terminator? Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg slayer robot had a imaginativeness strategy that projected much accusation than retinas could capture. Samsung came up with contact lenses that, erstwhile wirelessly connected to a compartment phone, supply users with each kinds of accusation astir what appears close earlier their eyes.

For example, if you are looking astatine a dog, the interaction lenses grounds the scene, nonstop it to the compartment telephone and, from there, instrumentality it to the interaction lenses, which task further accusation to your eyes, specified arsenic the dog’s breed, weight, and truthful on. In short, the merchandise was an evolved mentation of Google’s glasses but successful the signifier of interaction lenses.

Samsung's intelligent interaction lenses.

Patents are conscionable the extremity of the iceberg successful the exertion world’s wide originative process and behind-the-scenes work. Whether a merchandise subsequently sees the airy of time depends connected a company’s strategical and economical criteria. But specified formulas are not ever reliable.

For instance, successful 1993 Apple deed the nail connected the caput with its celebrated Newton, a precursor to the iPad, which simply arrived excessively early. The mobile instrumentality was a income flop, but that doesn’t mean that it should beryllium considered a full failure: “Without experiments, there’s nary success,” says Barredo.

Something akin happened to Microsoft with Windows 8, an innovative mentation of the level that is present celebrating its tenth anniversary. That mentation of Windows incorporated a existent gyration into the interface, which was called Metro and featured surviving ‘windows’ that were updated successful existent clip (referred to arsenic ‘Tiles’). But they were a resounding failure, and cipher liked them. Why? “It was excessively extremist a alteration [and it] came excessively soon,” Steven Sinofsky acknowledged, somewhat bitterly. Metro successful Windows 8 worked precise well, but the marketplace was not acceptable for that alteration yet.

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