Earlier this month the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Samsung revealing that their "Edge" smartphones will be able to offer more tricks in the future. Back in 2013 we reported that Samsung filed a patent for smartphone backside touch controls. This month we learn that a future Galaxy Edge smartphone may be the first smartphone to offer such a control.
Samsung's patent FIG. 9 illustrates the phone targeted for new touch controls is non-other than a future version of the Galaxy Edge. In patent FIG. 10 we're able to see Samsung illustrating a user control on the backside of the smartphone.
More specifically, the new touch control may or may not require a certain grip to be present before initiating the backside control. The grip includes the user's palm (#1030), one thumb (1040) and fingers (1050, 1060 and 1070) touching the smartphone in a grip configuration that would allow the backside control to function as finger 1090 illustrates. Under the smartphone's settings, the user will be able to determine what the backside control is to trigger. It could be used to control volume up and down, zoom in or out and scrolling slow or fast or up and down amongst other control options.
Other new controls could be set to be initiated by thumb taps on the side of the device's display and in one specific example, having both palms of the user touching the sides of the smartphone at the same time could automatically have the virtual keyboard pop-up for texting.
Samsung filed their patent application back in November 2014. Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.
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