The US patent and Trademark office officially published a newly granted patent for Google last week that covered a possible new feature being considered for their Pixel Smartphone. Google states in their filing that “it would be advantageous to have an improvement touch sensitive surface that offers additional modes of operation.” Google’s patent describes a new back side touch surface area and a distinct recessed touchpad as noted in our cover graphic. Of course Google could always license their patented idea to other Android OEM partners that show an interest in this feature that could distinguish provide an advantage to the iPhone or other competitors.
Features of New Pixel Device
Google describe that:
• Touch sensitive surface include a recessed surface feature disposed along a portion of the touch sensitive surface.
• In one embodiment, the recessed surface feature include a concave surface element relative to the areas of thetouch sensitive surface that are complementary to the recessed surface. e.g. those portions of the touch sensitive surface extending beyond a perimeter of the element.
• The touch sensitive surface may be disposed along a housing of an electronic device. For example, in one embodiment the touch sensitive surface is disposed along a rear major face of a device housing.
• This configuration permits the front major face of the device to accommodate a display.
• The user can control the device, and data presented on the display, by interfacing with the touch sensitive surface disposed on the backside of the device.
• Placing the touch sensitive surface on the rear of the device both provides for simpler user operation in one embodiment and leaves the entire front side of the device available for the display so that a finger does not need to occlude the touch sensitive display to interact with the images on the display.”
• The back side touchpad will be able to perform many tasks depending on the app that the user is currently in.
• It could be used to control music volume in a music app, zoom in or out when surfing the web or using a camera app.
• Users will be able to scroll a webpage of document without touching the front side display or getting in your way when reading.
• The patent also envisions the camera being placed in the middle of the device instead of the top left corner, along with a speaker just to the right of it.
• The uses for the rear-facing touch-based surface area could include any number of actions, such as scrolling through web pages, zooming in and out f images, managing volume for music and more.
• This larger touch-based surface area would potentially allow for drawing gestures on the surface to complete certain functions like launching apps or shortcuts.
• It include a touch-based surface area that surrounds what looks like the rear-facing fingerprint sensor.
• the recessed surface area isn’t labeled as a fingerprint sensor it holds the same shape as the one on the Pixel which is recessed itself.
About patent
Google’s granted patent was published by the U.S patent and Trademark office .Google filed for their patent exactly a year ago in June 2016.
Note
Patent mobile presents only a brief summary of granted patents with associated graphics graphics for journalistic news purposes as each Granted Patent is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.
