Apple's new patent proposes a way to eliminate 'butt dialing' once and for all; Digital Trends, 9/24/16

Kyle Wiggers, Digital Trends; Apple's new patent proposes a way to eliminate 'butt dialing' once and for all:

"From the boneheadedly pragmatic to the wildly impractical, Apple’s patents run the gamut of usefulness, but one of the newer patents filed by the Cupterino, California-based company falls squarely in the latter category. On Thursday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published an Apple filing, titled “detecting stowing or unstowing of a mobile device,” that presents a solution for the infamous “butt call” to which absentminded cellphone users too often fall victim...

There’s no certainty it’ll ever see the light of day, of course. (Patents aren’t a particularly reliable indicator of forthcoming features.) And Apple is notorious for filing applications that tend more toward the whimsical than feasible — last week, the iPhone maker patented “bleached sulfate” shopping bags with “rough and dull … [finishes].” But the idea of tapping the contextual prowess of smartwatches isn’t a new one, and is perhaps simple enough to implement in an over-the-air software update. Who knows: next time you inadvertently sit on your shiny new iPhone, it might just know who not to butt dial."