Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Drag and Drop Bluetooth Patent from Sony Ericsson

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Here's another intelligent solution of making things easier with the help of Bluetooth, this time coming from Sony Ericsson. The handset producer thought of a more convenient way of transferring files through Bluetooth, without having to go
through all the classic steps.

Sony Ericsson's patent looks to get rid of all the steps of browsing through the phone's menu, selecting a specific file, as well as the communication method or channel and then activating the communication function such as Bluetooth in order to transfer it to another phone. The company looks to make the best of touchscreeen features to simply drop the file that the user intends to send to another mobile phone by dragging it on the side of their screen in the direction of the phone they want to transfer the file to.

The handset producer's concept sounds pretty bold and innovative, although it might be a long while until actually seeing this feature introduced at a large scale in mobile phones. First of all, the devices will have to be touchscreen enabled, which means that only the high-end ones will benefit from it.

The action of dragging the item initiates an automatic data transfer procedure using short range communication. When the user drags the item towards the direction of the other phone, a question will pop-up, asking him whether he really wants to send it. Moreover, in case of NFC and short range radio, the user can drag the file towards any direction, as position no longer matters if they are within range for communication.

It's a daring and rather unexpected concept coming from Sony Ericsson. The handset producer uses touchscreen features only in some of its handsets and has only recently made a strong push on this market with high-end devices equipped with such a feature. Many patents usually never make it out on the market, although it would be pretty interesting to see it available at a large scale.

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