A patent owned by Apple includes an AirPods case with a touch screen, indicating that the case of the earbuds may one day have display-based controls.
The discovery comes from the aptly named Patently Apple. The patent was published today, after being filed with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office back in September 2022.
Patently Apple compiled the figures of the concept in its article, but you can see the figures in the post below.
A recent Apple patent describes not a player in the literal sense, but something similar to it conceptually. Technically, we are talking about a case for AirPods equipped with a touch screen. This solution will allow you to control playback directly from the case without taking pic.twitter.com/83koZTla8a
— Yaroslav Gavrilov (@appletester_rus) April 4, 2023
The patents shown include an AirPods case with a touch screen, obviously, but not only as a static display tool. Interestingly, the design looks quite like a sixth-generation iPod Nano, with several apps to match.
As you’d expect from a device centred around audio, there are media playback tools on the touch screen. A pause button, back, skip and a scrubbing bar, along with “Siri communicating” mentioned in the concept. According to Patently Apple, Siri will be used to navigate between apps, and there’s also ‘squeezing’ as a feature, where you squeeze the square case to change your audio mode or bring up content.
An Apple TV app, iMessage support, a weather app, audiobooks, maps and a radio app were all mentioned in the concept.
Taking a step back – headphone cases don’t need touch screens. They serve a solid dual function – to provide small earbuds with a place to be stored so they can’t get lost, and to charge them quickly while they are stored.
This screen, however, offers extra functionality that may be useful to some people in some circumstances, similar to a smartwatch – not everybody needs a smartwatch, but it’s an extra layer of tech that might be helpful in some circumstances.
The form factor of an AirPods case is quite nice and small, so there may be some circumstances where a user might prefer to watch content or switch between songs using this screen. Though, what immediately comes to mind, is that its battery may be shorter than models without the screen.
But obviously, this is just a concept and a patent at the moment. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Some of the images include renditions of the case with a touch-sensitive screen, while others picture it with a GUI and not necessarily a touch-sensitive control layout.
If Apple did produce a consumer-ready version of this case though, it’d be pretty cool. Right now, however, we’re waiting on Apple to officially reveal its VR/AR headset.