Stefan Mileschin

Still burns up battery

PatentlyApple has spotted several patents that suggest Apple is playing with the idea of making the Apple Watch's band identify users via their wrist's skin texture and arm hair.

Of course, every Apple fanboy wants a watch which can spot them by their arm hair and skin texture, that is far more important than having a watch which has to be re-charged every 12 hours.

The first patent describes a sensor built into the Watch or the watch's band that could use infrared to build a thermal image of your wrist and its identifying traits (like skin texture/arm hair) to identify who is wearing it.

Unlike most of Apple's other devices, the Apple Watch doesn't currently have any sort of built-in biometrics for unlocking -- there's no thumbprint sensor for Touch ID, or camera for Face ID. Unlocking your Apple Watch means poking at the screen to punch in a PIN (or, if you've configured it to unlock when you unlock your phone, doing that).

The big idea is that a sensor setup like this could make the unlocking process automatic without the need to unlock your phone.

The second granted patent describes a Watch band that can adjust itself on the fly -- think Nike's self-tightening shoes, but on your wrist. If the Watch detects that it's sliding while you're running ,(or if the aforementioned thermal sensors need a closer look at your wrist skin) tensioners in the device could tighten or loosen the band on command. I dunno how many people will trust Apple with the blood supply to their wrist.

https://fudzilla.com/news/mobile/493...-your-arm-hair