We still don’t know much about the long-rumored Apple over-the-ear headphones, but a patent released today describes a couple of features the company has at least considered: gesture controls and rotation detection.
The two features would work together …
It is always risky to use patents to know where Apple can go with new products. The company plays with many different ideas and patents many of them. None of this means that products or features will ever be in production.
But when it comes to over-the-ear headphone patents, there has been at least some consistency of direction. In 2018, for example, we saw a patent that suggests headphones can be reversible.
Rather than having to make sure we put them in the right direction, the left earbud over the left ear, the earbuds could automatically detect orientation and adjust their output to match.
Different people also wear headphones at different angles, including including the headband around the nape of the neck, which could complicate their lives if Apple wanted to include touch gesture controls. But today’s patent (seen by Patently Apple) describes a solution to that problem.
The patent describes how slide-based controls might work.
The systems and methods described in this document can be used, for example, to detect a gesture (eg, a slip) received as input from the user on a touch interface on the headphones, such as a touch interface integrated on a headset. The gesture can be made in a particular direction, such as toward Earth.
You could, for example, slide down to decrease the volume or go forward to skip to the next track. But Apple points to the problem posed if people use the headphones at different angles.
Some embodiments of the disclosure provide systems and methods for detecting rotation of the headphones to properly process user input to the headphones. […] The headphones can be worn in a plurality of configurations, such as upright with the headband around the top of the head, down with the headband around the back of the neck, or anywhere in between. Therefore, the systems and methods described in this document can be used to determine the rotation of the headphones in order to adequately determine the desired gesture and perform a desired result.
The sensors described could include a mixture of capacitive, which detects when in contact with the skin, and optics, which can measure the distance between the sensor and the different parts of the ear.
Once the headphones have determined their orientation, the gesture detection will be modified to match.
As for what is already known and rumored about Apple’s headphones, a discovery we made in the iOS 14 code in March gave a clue to the design of the headphones. A Bloomberg The report suggested that we can expect two models, one premium, one lighter and sportier. The same source also suggested that Apple is planning a modular design, which allows users to mix and match things like different headphones through magnetic accessories.
Of course, we can expect Apple to replicate AirPods features such as auto pairing, auto pause and resume, and active noise cancellation found in the Pro model.
Headphones were originally expected to launch around the drop, but the coronavirus crisis may have slowed things down. Price is unknown, but likely to be significantly more expensive than AirPods Pro’s $ 249. Apple will compete in the same market as the Bowers & Wilkins PX7 ($ 399), Sony WH-1000XM3 ($ 349), and Bose. Noise Canceling Headphones 700 ($ 399), so it looks like $ 349-399.
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