Chicago (IL) - The US Patent & Trademark Office has published the original and most comprehensive patent describing Apple’s iPhone: The company outlines its smartphone in a ginourmos document on 371 pages containing a total of 45 patent claims. And if you ever wondered who invented the iPhone, we now have more clarity: It was Steven P. Jobs et al.
"Boy, have we patented it!", said Jobs during the first iPhone presentation. As of today we know that Jobs did not exaggerate and that using the first person plural in this sentence was absolutely appropriate. “Jobs; Steven P. ; et al.” is the registered as the holder of the patent describing “Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Determining Commands by Applying Heuristics.“
The add-on “et al”, derived from the Latin “et alii” (sometimes also “et alia”) means “and others”, indicating that there are additional patent authors, in this case 24 individuals. Jobs, however has taken the patent lead and is likely to become be the one person remembered for inventing the device. Jobs’ lead position also signifies the balance of power within Apple, the product development philosophy within the company. It is widely believed that developing the iPhone was Jobs’ idea.
The tremendously detailed 371-page patent covers iPhone's features and UI in excruciating details. Interestingly, the document lists several features that are not included with today's iPhone and it remains unclear whether these features were ditched in the last minute or have been scheduled for future software upgrades.
Blogging, dictionary, IM, Flash, Java, Safari inline content, MMS, voice commands, audio recording
One of the patent illustrations shows a home screen with the familiar application icons as well as a blog application icon we haven’t seen in the actual device. It is hard to tell if a blogging application will make it into future iPhone software upgrades, especially as long as the iPhone does not evolve into a true content creating device. However, analysts believe that the iPhone will bring a myriad of mobile social networking features paired with the GPS-based location positioning. A blogging application could be a nice fit for this environment.
A “Dictionary” application is another missing feature described in the patent. The feature could be easily "borrowed" from the existing Dictionary application that is a part of Mac OS X. Based on the existing Dictionary implementation in OS X, that Dictionary could be used not only to browse word definitions within the application, but to look up word meanings from any other iPhone application – such as in emails. We would expect the Dictionary database to be localized in all iPhone-supported languages.
The patent filing also mentions an instant messaging feature, which could be implemented by adapting OS X's iChat IM and videoconferencing application. The iChat on OS X already supports AIM connectivity, but lacks the ability to connect to the widely popular Windows Live Messenger platform.
The filing mentions Safari features that would enable the browser play multimedia (Quicktime, Flash) content from within the software (in-line), as opposed to launching YouTube or movie/music player in the current iPhone implementation. Adobe promised to bring Flash to the iPhone with the release of iPhone SDK on March 6, but later backtracked a bit by saying the SDK restrictions prohibit developers from creating Safari plug-ins.
Other software improvements include features regularly found on competing smartphones, such as Java software downloads, MMS picture and video messaging, the ability to record audio and the support for voice-activated commands. Apple also mentions that more multi-touch capabilities could be available for applications, including acceleration features described through a physical click wheel or a touchscreen. It is generally believed that the so-called iPhone nano, a smaller stripped-down version of the handset, will incorporate a physical click-wheel.
Videoconferencing and GPS
The most interesting parts of the iPhone patent are currently non-existent, but widely expected features, such as dedicated GPS hardware for real-time location positioning, as well as videoconferencing features, which TG Daily predicts to become one of the next iPhone's killer applications. Apple says GPS hardware could be used to bring precise positional information to other applications, mentioning weather yellow page widgets as examples. The company has recently introduced geo-tagging support in the iPhone 2.0 firmware, a feature that would use GPS hardware to determine the exact location where a photo was taken.
It is interesting to note that Apple described hardware videoconferencing capabilities through optical sensors at the top of the handset. If a front-facing camera is coming in the 3G iPhone, it could mean the recent invention of optical sensors wedged between the LCD cells are still in the labs.