Apple today received U.S. Patent No. 8,614,693, which describes a method for accurately determining user interactions with touchscreens for touch and hover events (bringing your finger close to a screen, but not quite touching it), reports AppleInsider.
Apple also snagged U.S. Patent No. 8,615,290, which details an embedded heart rate monitor for smartphones.
Touchscreen hovering tech isn’t exactly new though — Samsung first implemented it in the Galaxy Note 2 smartphone last year, and it brought the technology to all of its gadgets released since then. Having the ability to hover a finger or stylus over a touchscreen opens up new possibilities, like previewing a link’s source or a picture without directly selecting it.
You can think of it similar to what happens when you hover your mouse pointer over something on your computer, something that’s been lost in most touchscreen devices so far.
But while Samsung may have been first to bring hover tech to its gadgets, it seems Apple wants to do it better. The patent describes several methods for increasing the accuracy of hover events, which could compensate for people with shaky fingers. We’ve also seen patent applications from Apple years ago describing hover touch tech.