Patents: haptic feedback coming to your next iPhone?

Ever since the Disney Research presentation on Haptic Feedback at SXSW (link), I can’t stop thinking about using electricity to reverse-engineer the sense of touch (wetness, heat, pricklies, etc)… It’s fun to think that Apple is already working this into our iPhones.

Haptic feedback device: Everyone is talking about the possibility of the next iPhone nixing the physical home button for a fingerprint sensor or touch-based version, but that could be just the beginning. This patent application details Apple’s interest in haptic or tactile feedback, which can enable users to feel like they are pressing a physical button, when they’re actually not. Specifically, Apple mentions that it wants the “user to feel as though the keys had been depressed.”

via Apple’s craziest futuristic patents – Business Insider.