Apple receives patent for color-changing Apple Watch bands
Apple has been granted a patent for color-changing Apple Watch band that might be managed with an app.
In keeping with Patently Apple(Opens in a brand new tab), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace formally granted Apple the patent on Tuesday.
The submitting, which is publicly accessible on the federal government web site, particulars how the expertise would work. The band “consists of electrochromic options that present adjustable colour management based mostly on an utilized voltage to supply a wide range of colours and colour combos to be displayed by a single band.” By a system, presumably an Apple Watch or iPhone interface, customers can “management, choose, and/or regulate colours of the watch band.”
A diagram within the patent reveals how Apple Watch would management the band’s colours and types.
Credit score: Apple
Electrochromic materials is greatest often called the expertise behind anti-glare mirrors in vehicles and good glass home windows that regulate warmth and turn into tinted or opaque. The patent describes how the filaments or fibers of the band can embody conductors and electrochromic layers that that reply when voltage is utilized. The filaments are then woven into cloth like several regular fabric band. Diagrams present three stripes of cloth that may independently present totally different colours.
The patent additionally explains how the colour could be manually modified by the consumer or regulate robotically based mostly on time, date, textual content, icons, and notifications. So your watch band may flip a unique colour should you get a brand new textual content or your alarm goes off. So, form of like a extremely subtle temper ring.
It’s a reasonably exceptional achievement to weave this expertise — that’s used largely in glass — into cloth. But it surely’s value noting {that a} color-changing Apple Watch band may by no means come to market.
Apple and different huge tech corporations have moonshot analysis and improvement packages that always file patents that by no means come to fruition. Plus, interchangeable bands for Apple Watch are profitable for Apple and supply alternatives for model collaborations.
That mentioned, Apple lately obtained a patent for a built-in smartwatch digital camera, so these patents is perhaps the seeds of some main modifications to come back with Apple Watch.
Cecily is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers information and web tendencies associated to Apple, journey, and well being. Yow will discover her on Twitter at @cecily_mauran(Opens in a new tab).
