Apple is planning some bold changes to the iPhone in the next two years. It might be made entirely from glass, it’s definitely losing the headphone jack, and a new patent reveals that Apple might well be trying to make its new device waterproof enough to let you take photos under the sea without having to spend three hours trying to replace your phone at the Genius Bar.
The patent filed by Apple affirms that the company has been working on a color-correction system for underwater photos. Color correction is exactly what it sounds like, as photographic technology doesn’t really capture colors the way human eyes see them, so software adjusts it to more closely reflect our vision. That’s particularly tricky in water, which layers some complicated physics on top of the necessity of controlling light. Apple’s patent would take a lot of the hard work out of underwater photography.
This, of course, is a curious thing for Apple to be concerned about, since currently nothing it produces is waterproof. But, of course, part of the pitch for getting rid of the headphone jack was that it would help Apple make future iPhones more watertight, and considering 19 percent of us will accidentally dump our phone in the crapper at some point, they do have a point about that being a user feature. Still, if we’ve got to choose between using the iPhone under water and not buying new headphones, we suspect most people will choose the latter.
(Via Quartz)
