Apple May Release A Watch Band That Can Identify You Through Your Skin

Tech companies had thought up of some pretty insane ideas before and sometimes, they managed to turn the impossibles into reality. And if Apple could really do what their patent is suggesting that they could do, the company can take the crown as being the king of innovation, as it has always trying to portray itself as.

Infrared Sensors

The first patent suggests the feasibility of using specialized infrared sensors to reconstruct a thermal picture of the wearer’s wrist as well as identifying traits of the person’s wrist like skin texture and arm hair to tell who is the person wearing it. 

While every other Apple devices have biometric sensors (TouchID or FaceID) to authenticate the user, the Apple Watch currently has none of that. There are currently two pretty rudimentary ways of unlocking your Watch at the moment. The first one is tapping the screen to wake it up and punch in a usual PIN code. Or you can set up your watch to wake along with your iPhone. With the new patent, Apple can circumvent having to unlock the phone altogether.

Auto-Adjusting Watch Bands

The second patent is quite neat as well. It is all about a watch band that can tighten itself on the go. Pretty similar to the fancy Nike’s self-lacing shoes that came out quite a while ago. If the Watch realizes that it is slipping from your wrist when you’re doing something like exercising, or when the aforementioned infrared sensors need a closer and clearer look at the texture of your skin, the bands can automatically tighten themselves.

Light-Up Watch Bands

The third patent involves a light-up watch band. Imagine having several RGB lights that can light up depending on your notifications. There can be a bar of light that can indicate how long you’ve run and how much you’ve got left before you finish your run. A notification light for when you got texts or calls on your phone. Or even a light that can remind you if you’ve got an event logged in your calendar for the next hour. I can see why this will become immensely useful: You don’t need to wake your display to see all of that.

War On 3rd-Party Watch Band Makers?

As always, although Apple has filed for some pretty interesting patents, not a lot of them managed to pass through R&D and into actual products. Still, we can dream of them becoming reality.

But with the addition of much-needed sensors onto watch bands, Apple is more or less declaring war on the third-party band market. The company has been playing nice for the last few years, opting to keep the bands relatively simple to pave the way for creative third party bands. But now, the company is giving you an ultimatum: Whether you want security and convenience of an expensive Apple-branded watch band, or you want a more stylish band, but without all of these vital features?