If the title is confusing, it’s probably because it’s rather counter-intuitive. Apple has been granted a patent for “Fine-tuning an operation based on tapping”, which, in a nutshell, means that tapping the sides of your phone will translate on on-screen controls.
The purpose of this patent is to give users finer tuning capabilities with their phones, such as selecting text or moving objects on the screen in minuscule amounts. For example, you might have experienced how moving a slider to a precise position can be difficult (say, to number 58 on a 100-unit scale), and lifting your finger from the screen may change the position of the slider again. With this new technology, tapping the sides of the phone (or device with this technology) will modify the position of the active object on the screen in finer steps proportional to the force of the tap.
We don’t know when (and if) this technology will make it to any Apple devices, but one can hope.
Source: AppleInsider
