Apple may very well be engaged on a AirPods case that encompasses a touchscreen so you possibly can management your audio and different apps with out utilizing your iPhone – kinda like the way you’d use an Apple Watch.
That’s primarily based on particulars from a lately printed patent application (opens in new tab), which was filed with the US patent workplace again in September 2022 and which exhibits an AirPods case that options an “interactive person interface.” The patent software particulars how, when you’ve related the case to your iPhone, you can management the music taking part in via your AirPods through the use of a display on the entrance of the case. This might allow you to vary the quantity, pause the monitor, play it once more, or skip forward to the subsequent track (through Patently Apple (opens in new tab)).
If Apple did introduce such a case for the perfect AirPods, it wouldn’t be the primary to do that strategy; JBL did the identical factor with the game-changing Tour Professional 2 earbuds. Nevertheless, Apple’s model might include a number of upgrades over its predecessors.
For a begin, the case would management extra than simply your Apple Music app. The patent particulars how you can use it to work together with a variety of iPhone gadgets and providers together with Apple TV, Apple Maps, iMessage, and the Climate App. It sounds nearly like an Apple Watch with out well being and health options.
What’s extra, Apple’s case would reportedly introduce options resembling haptics to provide customers tactile suggestions and to permit for a wider vary of controls. At one level the patent mentions how you can squeeze the case to vary the audio mode of Apple TV Plus exhibits and movies.
As fascinating because the case sounds, don’t get your hopes up that we’ll have it in our arms any time quickly – or ever, for that matter. Apple could have utilized for a patent, however that’s no assure that will probably be permitted, or that the corporate will make the touchscreen AirPods case a actuality even whether it is granted.
What’s extra, we don’t understand how Apple would launch this AirPods accent. It might determine to make it the default case for the Apple AirPods Professional 3 or one other future product, or Apple might determine to launch the case as an non-obligatory add-on for the prevailing AirPods vary.
We’ll have to attend and see what Apple decides with this touchscreen AirPods charging case, however whether or not it launches this 12 months or not, 2023 may very well be a giant 12 months for the tech large. At WWDC 2023 it might lastly unveil its long-rumored Apple VR headset, whereas the iPhone 15 might lastly be getting USB-C – in probably the most Apple means attainable.