Samsung’s
A new patent demonstrates that the Korean company could be working on display technology that lets a smartwatch can project onto any nearby surface.
The patent details how the contours of a palm or the back of a hand can be used to create a virtual skin-based display, and how fingers can be incorporated into a gesture based control system.
The sketches that accompany the USPTO listing demonstrate that the potential new wearable could also extend its display to a nearby wall or even a flat surface, such as a table, that the user is near.
The listing also describes how the display technology could be used on other wearable tech form factors such as AR and VR headsets.
As with any patent application, there’s no guarantee that we’ll ever see these devices in the real world but it’s good to see Samsung thinking outside the traditional square box for smartwatches. Not for the first time, of course…
The Samsung Gear S2, the Korean giant’s latest smartwatch, went live at the tail end of last year. The round-faced wearable comes in two variants: standard and classic, shuns
It’s not just on smartwatches where Samsung is thinking a little differently in the wearables space either. It revealed a trio of new wearable innovations, born out of its Creative Lab (C-Lab), in January and showed them off at CES. The line up included Welt – a lifestyle tracker in a belt, Rink – a controller for the company’s Gear VR headset and TipTalk, a new UX for smartwatch calling.
These aren’t actually products that will hit the shops – C-Lab is Samsung’s in-house development platform for employees, set up to “foster creative thinking throughout the company”.
