Apple may someday add color sampling sensors to its Apple Watch, allowing the device to change the color of watch faces to match the color of the user’s watchband or clothing. (Via AppleInsider).
In a patent granted this week by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, entitled “Electronic Devices with Color Sampling Sensors,” Apple describes how light sensors under the Apple Watch display could determine the color of the wearer’s clothing and watchband, in order to match the background of the currently displayed watch face with those colors.
An electronic device such as a watch may include a display and a light sensor located behind the display. The light sensor may be used to measure the color of external objects. During color sampling operations, the display may emit
light towardsthe external object in front of the display while the light sensor gathers color measurements. The display may emit light of different colors and the light sensor may detect an amount of reflected light for each color, which in turn may be used to determine the color of the external object. The control circuitry may use a watch-band-specific algorithm to determine the color of watch bands andm a y use a clothing-specific algorithm to determine the color of clothing. The control circuitry may display the color on the display so that the face of the watch matches the user’s clothing or matches the user’s watch band.
As is normal with any Apple patent, just because Apple is filing for a patent doesn’t mean that it will offer the technology in the near future, if at all. However, the patent does provide a nice inside peek at the technology that Apple is considering and possibly working on for future devices.
