NEW DELHI: It won’t be wrong to say that portable gaming consoles are among the different gadgets the Apple iPhone has managed to make redundant.

It looks like the Cupertino giant plans to take the gaming experience on its premium smartphone to the next level by integrating a gaming joystick with the Home button.

The US Patent & Trademark Office has published a patent application from Apple that features a Home button (for iOS devices) which also doubles up as a gaming joystick. The application was first spotted by Patently Apple.

As per the patent application, Apple’s next-generation Home button will be multi-mode with the first mode retaining the standard functionality and the second one converting it to a gaming joystick. The Home button will pop out when a user exerts pressure on the button.

In the patent’s backgrounder, Apple mentions that the advanced Home button will allow users to experience all portions of the game display and see what the user is controlling. It will also offer tactile feedback while playing a game which is not possible while playing the game purely through touch controls.


Image courtesy: Patently Apple

Apple has mentioned that the new Home Button could include different sensors including a force sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, contact sensor, optical sensor, capacitive sensor, ultrasonic sensor, and/or a tactile switch.

Apple has credited Colin Ely and Fletcher Rothkopf as the inventors of patent.

It would be interesting to see how Apple will integrate the Touch ID finger print sensor with the multi-mode Home key if it ever decides to implement this gaming-focused Home button on its iOS devices.

Meanwhile, the next-generation iPhone will reportedly get a memory upgrade. According to Taiwan’s Tech News, Apple may finally endow the iPhone 6S with 2GB RAM.

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