Apple has filed a patent application to add always-on status indicators to the iPhone. The innovation would address a common task for cell phones but a headache for owners of the touch-screen handset.
In most flip-phones and even other touch-screen devices, users can instantly know when they’ve missed a call or received a voice-mail message. However, for iPhone users, it requires turning on the phone and going into settings to retrieve the information.
Lack of such a basic ability puts the iPhone behind rivals, such as RIM’s Blackberry.
“The Blackberry has a little red light” that appears when a call was missed, Current Analysis handset analyst Avi Greengart told Cult of Mac.
The company, in its 24-page application to the U.S. Patent Office, outlined creating a second backlight that would display alerts and other message icons when the primary LCD touch-screen is inactive. Alert icons would appear in small transparent regions of the screen.
Along with creating a transparent region for messages, Apple proposes manipulating the size, shape and color of the status icons allowing multiple alerts to be displayed.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
