Just don't whack it too hard...
What a way to round off the working week with a humorous patent that has been filed by Microsoft. If implemented into Windows Phone, we'll be looking to "whack off" our phones should they start ringing. Depending on what the term "whack" means in the society you belong to, it usually involves utmost satisfaction followed by intense drowsiness, or crying children - but please attempt to stay with us without chuckling while we check out how Microsoft will allow us to whack our phones.
According to PatentBolt, Microsoft's filing states the following overview:
"There are a variety of circumstances under which it may be desirable to quickly control a device without having to interact with a traditional user interface. For example, often mobile device users forget to set their mobile devices in a silent or vibrate mode and the device rings or makes sounds at an inopportune moment."
The technique described above could be used for controlling the audio signal of a device. Should a Windows Phone begin ringing in the library, one can quickly whack it while it's in the pocket to silence the ringtone. Much like in some handsets owners can flip the phone and rest it on its screen for the ringer to fall silent.
PatentBolt goes on to explain that should an audio signal be produced, a whack based audio module (110) inside the mobile device could receive acceleration data from the accelerometer (120). That data would indicate the acceleration of the device and would pass data onto the whack based audio module, which would then -- through the inclusion of exemplar whack event data (130) -- calculate a correlation between the acceleration data and exemplar event data to detect a "whack".
Audio could then be controlled should a whacking event be determined. Pretty neat. In FIG. 3A we can see an illustration of the "whack" in action. This could involve a slap, tap, slick, smack, or other light strikes to register against exemplar data. Microsoft states in the filing that the types of audio signals that could be silenced by a whacking event could include a ringing, a ringtone, user-initiated audio, a tone, a played recording, and an alarm.
Would you like to be able to whack your phone? Let us know in the comments.
Source: PatentBolt, via: WMPU
