Apple Patents A Solution To Prevent Nosy People From Looking At Your Phone Screen

Smartphones are now an extent of our lives and they contain a ton of sensitive information that we want no one else to know. However, when mentioning privacy, we tend to forget the simple act of people looking at our phone screens.

Apple has presented a solution for this and it has the potential to stop nosy people from prying on what you are doing on your phone. The iPhone maker calls the tech Gaze-Dependent Display Encryption. What it does is to identify where you (the owner of the phone) is looking at and obscure the rest.

Apple said in the patent that the obscured screen can display the same content as the area you are looking at but it would be illegible.

Apple is not the first company to present a solution to prevent nosy people from peeking at our phones. Black Berry with its Privacy Shade functionary is an example. However, that of Black Berry requires more effort from users as they have to move their finger over the area they want to read, the rest of the screen will be blackened, which might draw even more attention.

As you may have guessed, the biggest obstacle for Apple is to develop the gaze detection technology. So far, we have had sensors that can detect whether the user is looking at the phone. However, identifying a specific area on the screen which users are looking at is a real challenge.

Samsung has offered a similar tech with which you can scroll the pages on the phones without using your finger. However, its usefulness stops at you tilting the phone or your head to use the function.

A patent is no guarantee that we will see this handy feature on the next iPhone or iPad soon.

>>> COVID-19: Apple CEO Allows Global Employees To Work From Home