Yesterday, Apple has been awarded a new patent covering an Apple Pencil meant for the future iPhones. Apple’s $99 stylus called Apple Pencil is currently only available for the iPad Pro model due to its dependency on a special layer beneath the display. However, the company seems to have future plans for launching an Apple Pencil for the iPhone as the United States Patent and Trademark Office have awarded Apple a patent exactly for that.
The patent is entitled “Devices and methods for manipulating user interfaces with a stylus†and assigned a Patent No. 9,658,704. The patent description talks about numerous devices will be supported by the Apple Pencil with touchscreen and one or more sensors to detect signals from a stylus.
The patent also goes on to discuss the compatibility of a stylus with portable devices used for communications such as the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad with the help of the projected mutual capacitance sensing technology that Apple is supporting through its current mobile operating system.
The wording used in the patent strongly hints at a future Apple Pencil that could be used with apps such as word processors, spreadsheets, game playing, image editing, web browsing, email, and more. The Apple Pencil may also support Mac devices with touch-sensitive trackpads.
Throughout the patent application, the words like “phone” and “iPhone” are referenced many times. One of the illustrations included in the patent application clearly shows a device that looks more like an iPhone. Apple had filed the patents back in 2015.
Last September, in an interview, the company’s CEO Tim Cook may have hinted an Apple Pencil working with iPhones. So, there are chances of next-generation iPhone devices to incorporate a special system beneath the touchscreen to provide support for the Apple Pencil input.
Recently, Apple has also been awarded patents for in-screen Touch ID, edge-to-edge display, and 3D scanner.
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