Matt Groening’s ‘Futurama’ has already referenced the ‘Eyephone’ but now it looks like this device may become a reality at some point, if only in name. A patent granted yesterday to Apple shows that the Cupertino based tech giant is at least thinking about taking on the recently announced ‘Google: Project Glass‘.
As we know from the ‘Patent Pending Blogs‘, not all ideas become a reality and this may just be a ploy by Apple to stop Google developing this hardware before Apple gets a chance. However, you should never rule out anything when it comes to Apple.
The patent shows a display projecting an image viewable by a first eye of the user. A first peripheral light element is positioned to emit light of one or more colors in close proximity to the periphery of the first display. When the lens receives data representing a source image, it processes the data representing the source image to generate an image for the first display, and to generate a first set of peripheral conditioning signals.
Apple’s patent describes a device using two LCDs rather than just the one, Google’s otherwise preferred method with Project Glass.
This means that Apple could be thinking about a full immersion head mounted display. How this would work in day to day use is yet to be seen, but but it would definitely make app-based gaming a lot more interesting. There are also hints that the ‘Eyephone’ would have “Audio components, headphone connectivity, movie viewing capability, network connectivity and vocal input methods”.
Whether this gadget will ever make it to market is yet to be seen, but with Apple it is best to adopt the motto ‘Never Say Never.’
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