Apple Watch With a Camera? Newly Published Patent Shows Intriguing Design

The Apple Watch has been a major success for the company, and is an even bigger business than the dominating iPod ever was. With the many different paths the Watch could follow going into the future, there’s now hints that the device could be made into a wearable camera thanks to these newly granted patents.

The patent images, as shown below, use a design that incorporates the camera into the watchband rather than into the Apple Watch itself. This would allow the user to position the camera in a variety of angles while still being able to look at the watch face to compose the image. If you’re a photographer and own the Apple Watch, surely you’ve spent at least a little time trying to think of how they could add a camera to it. The watchband idea handles a lot of the issues that face having a camera directly on the watch, and adds even more versatility than I would have anticipated.

Apple doesn’t stop their big ideas there, however. They also detail implementations of having dual cameras that would act as a 360-degree camera for video, actions such a pinching the watchband and verbal commands to capture photos and videos, and a way for a portion of the watchband to maintain its form after being manipulated so that it would be fixed into place without holding on to it.

As I’ve already mentioned before, I often don’t carry my phone with me and opt to just have a cellular connected Apple Watch. Missing out on having a mobile camera has been the number one downside to this, and I think Apple realizes this too. Now it seems to be a question of when.