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Maybe that’s why Samsung removed Bluetooth from the S Pen: to shift the focus to gestures facilitated by its Galaxy Ring. A recently unearthed patent filing offers a glimpse at what Samsung is concocting in its research and development department. Up next on the docket are more gestures for the Galaxy Ring, including the ability to control the interface on a device in front of you.
The patent was filed through the World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, though 91Mobiles brought it to our attention. The patent is mainly in Korean, and I could only skim it through machine translation. It describes a connected peripheral that can wirelessly control and transfer data between separate displays. It doesn’t specify what type of content is being passed through or the kinds of gestures you’d use other than back and forth, but the graphical diagrams depict a laptop and a tablet as externally connected devices. While it’s not quite like the computer scene in Minority Report, I’ll be excited if it gets us one step closer.
One diagram in the patent also depicts a stylus-like pen, the S Pen, performing similar actions as the ring shown on a hand. The patent is confusing, but we can at least discern that Samsung is developing something that allows you to switch apps between windows or move a cursor between them. The devices shown in the patents likely allude to Samsung’s Galaxy Book laptops and Galaxy Tab tablets. An accessory like the Galaxy Ring is an easy unifier that can convince more people to enter the Samsung device ecosystem.
Samsung’s first-generation Galaxy Ring already has limited gesture offerings, though there’s not much to write home about. It only works if you have it paired with a Galaxy smartphone. You can use a gesture to dismiss an alarm on the phone or fire off the shutter in the camera app. That’s it. These gestures already exist within the Samsung Galaxy wearable ecosystem, so they’re not groundbreaking. What the patents describe is more like a wireless peripheral.
We have no idea if Samsung’s idea will ever come to fruition. Most companies file patents on a “just in case” basis. This gives them the bragging right to say they were the first to think of it and allows them to integrate the idea into a future product whenever they feel like it. Maybe Samsung will reveal this patent in the next-generation Galaxy Ring. Or perhaps it is a patent about using an external accessory like a stylus or a smart ring to move windows between devices.
