Apple has been working on how to install the camera lens in the Apple Watch, and one of the suggestions is to make it part of the familiar Digital Crown. Imagine when you point at someone and your Apple Watch takes a photo without their knowledge.
This is creepy. It’s safe to say that Apple will have privacy protections in place, as a newly granted patent seven times highlights the need for privacy in this design. However, the “watch with camera” patent itself doesn’t detail any privacy concerns.
The current disclosure, “envisions that entities responsible for the collection, analysis, disclosure, transfer, storage or other use of this personal information data will comply with established privacy policies and/or privacy practices.”
Apple has previously been granted a patent that suggests an embedded camera under the Apple Watch’s display. Even this new patent isn’t all about using a digital crown.
“Alternatively, alternatively… the camera could be implemented as a rear-facing camera that captures pictures through the back of the watch case,” the patent suggests. “Although the wrist may obscure the camera scene when the watch case is on the wrist, the case can be removed from the wrist via the release mechanism in the connection port, or by removing the case with the strap to use the back camera to take pictures.”
So users can take off their watch, hold it up, and take a photo in a way that looks less like a stalker and more like a spy. Apple thinks the watch face can be turned into a viewfinder, “a camera flash … which can be used more for optical heart rate monitoring or other physiological sensing applications when the watch is worn on the wrist.”
The idea is pretty much a side one, though, and doesn’t touch on issues like how the watch locks when it’s removed from the wrist, for example.
“A watch may include a rotatable dial, such as a rotatable crown for digital input. A camera may be included in this assembly to capture images through an aperture extending into the dial. A lens may be integrated within the aperture and/or the dial behind an aperture to focus an image of a scene,” the patent document describes. “The image sensor placed behind the aperture can be further configured to detect movement of markings on the dial, so that the image sensor can act both as a camera to capture a picture of the scene and as a sensor to detect the rotation of the dial to sense rotational input.”
There are two attendant problems with fitting a lens into the Digital Crown. One problem is that the patent doesn’t discuss how to take the photo. One obvious possibility is that the watch face once again becomes a viewfinder and has a button for taking pictures. Alternatively, Apple could expand its new Apple Watch accessibility features, such as the ability to take pictures when users clench their fists.
Another issue, though, is how to fit the lens into the Digital Crown, which is already a fairly complex issue, and this patent doesn’t address that. One of the two inventors on this patent is Tyler S. Bushnell, whose previous work includes filing a patent for a modified digital crown. Rather than a mechanism, the top of the crown could be made into a touch-sensitive area – which would potentially make room for a camera lens.