Microsoft Patents Whacking Your Phone To Silence It 214
another random user writes with news of a patent application from Microsoft that details a method for silencing your phone by giving it a whack. "There are a variety of circumstances under which it may be desirable to quickly control a device without having to interact with a traditional user interface. For example, often mobile device users forget to set their mobile devices in a silent or vibrate mode and the device rings or makes sounds at an inopportune moment." And yes, 'whack' is the technical term used in the patent (20120231838): "receiving information indicative of acceleration of the mobile communications device; determining correlation between the information indicative of acceleration of the mobile communications device and exemplar whack event data; and based at least on the correlation, controlling an audio signal of the mobile communications device." This method is not recommended for controlling the audio output of animals or children.
Already done with Nokia phone (Score:2, Informative)
My Nokia 6600 fold already had this feature for years. You just tap it twice and it silences alarms and calls. And shows the current time on the front panel. Where's the actually new stuff in this patent because everything else seems like an obvious extension to that?
Re:Geeze.. (Score:5, Informative)
Quite obvious NOW isn't it. After the event it's obvious with the use of 20/20 hindsight
it's pretty fucking obvious.
it's so obvious it's been used already - in a more sophisticated form too, Nokia has had "turn over on table" silence for ages - turning it into a whack isn't really that much of a thing.
what's more, the feature appeared on phones just about when the hw started featuring accel sensors. it's the second most obvious use after automatic screen rotation.
Re:That this is patenteable AT ALL (Score:5, Informative)
intentional "whack" from a bit of jostling or other causes of sudden acceleration, which doesn't seem at all obvious how to do,
It's only a magnitude. Random jostling is not the same as a good solid whack, which easily can exceed 5Gs. People do not typically experience 5G engvironments unless they are in a jet fighter or an automobile accident. Measure with a phone's built-in accelerometer any 5G thwack = intentional whack.
Bam. Done.
It's an obvious application. It's so obvious that you can buy tags to attach to shipped items that measure whacks, and if it exceeds the whack standard of the tag, then the shipper is at fault for damage.
http://www.drypak.com/shippingHandlingIndicators.html [drypak.com]
This is just using already-built-in accelerometers and doing the exact same thing. Don't forget the standard is supposed to be "nonobvious to someone skilled in the art" and not "nonobvious to a moron."
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BMO
Here's prior art for you (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, so you want prior art?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=br.com.eversource.shake2silence&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImJyLmNvbS5ldmVyc291cmNlLnNoYWtlMnNpbGVuY2UiXQ [google.com]..
Last update was on December 2010 - so it's a fair to assume the first version was submitted even earlier. And that's just one example I could find quickly, of course. It wouldn't surprise me it there are many more other apps (for Android or iOS alike) that does the same thing and was made before.
And yeah, as rolfwind said, just because the idea was implemented only after 10 years after Microsoft entered the smartphone market, doesn't mean it's patentable. The technology needed for this idea wasn't ubiquotous on smartphones until some 4 or 5 years ago anyway, so you should rather start making the math at that point in time.