If a recently-granted patent makes it into the product—they usually usually don’t—then a future Apple Watch might be able to mechanically color-coordinate with any band and even your clothes or equipment.
The patent, filed in July of 2021 and simply granted on August 22, 2023, methods through which a future Apple Watch would possibly be capable to change the colour of its face to match your band, or virtually anything.
For official Apple watch bands, the gadget (the Apple Watch) may determine precisely which band you may have, matching the show to it from a predetermined listing. However for non-official bands, or certainly every other object like your clothes, purse, jewellery, or equipment Apple has a extra refined methodology in retailer.
The patent describes a light-weight sensor behind the show (just like the ambient gentle sensor on right this moment’s Apple Watches). You’ll maintain your Apple Watch withstand the item you wish to measure (your tie, as an example), and the show would cycle via emitting a collection of particular colours whereas the sunshine sensor measures how a lot gentle is mirrored again to it. An algorithm items collectively that information to find out the precise colour.
However that’s not all! Apple even describes utilizing the capacitive show to assist decide the materials of what you’re measuring. This bit from the patent is very attention-grabbing:
Along with or as a substitute of gathering person enter to find out the suitable algorithm for figuring out the colour of exterior objects, management circuitry could use a sensor to assist classify exterior object and determine an applicable algorithm for figuring out its colour. For instance, contact sensor could collect capacitive info whereas object is held over show. This capacitive info could also be indicative of the kind of materials that object is fabricated from Supplies with totally different dielectric constants will produce totally different responses from contact sensor
Supplies with a comparatively excessive dielectric fixed resembling metallic could end in the next capacitive studying from contact sensor than supplies with a comparatively low dielectric fixed resembling cloth. After figuring out the kind of materials that object is made out of based mostly on the capacitive sensor information from contact sensor, management circuitry could choose which algorithm to make use of based mostly on the kind of materials and/or could in any other case slender down the attainable outcomes that an algorithm could produce based mostly on the kind of materials.
In different phrases, totally different supplies require totally different algorithms to accurately decide their colour. So the capacitive show might be able to decide if a floor is fabric, leather-based, metallic, plastic, or one thing else by measuring the resistance on the capacitive contact display screen held in opposition to it. You can think about this additionally getting used within the ensuing watch face; match a metallic object, and get a watch face with faux-metal sheen to it, as an example.
It’s unclear if this expertise is feasible utilizing simply the ambient gentle sensor that presently exists on Apple Watches underneath the OLED show. However we’d prefer to remind our readers that Apple recordsdata for and is granted patents on a regular basis that by no means make it into any product. This characteristic could by no means come to cross, or it might be enabled by a future watchOS replace, doubtlessly restricted to particular Apple Watch fashions.