iPhone Instant Messaging Patent

What do you think about using instant messaging on your mobile? For me, this is pretty useless, but I know a lot of people who do it, and a large part of them really needs such a feature. Well, being given the above, it's no surprise that this is one of the most heavily requested features for Apple's mobile since its debut, but the Cupertino-based company didn't add it yet. Unfortunately, I can't tell you when is this going to be added, but since Apple filed for a patent related to this, this is a move worth being observed closer.


The patent I mentioned above was published back in March, and describes an interface similar to that currently used for the SMS interface of the iPhone, but with a bunch of key changes, including a list of suggested keywords, and since the drawings included with this patent points to "Instant Messages" in a lot of places,everything looks obvious to me.

Just check the abstract: "A portable electronic device for instant messaging is disclosed. One aspect of the invention involves a graphical user interface (GUI) on a portable electronic device with a touch screen display. The GUI has a set of messages exchanged between a user of the device and another person. The set of messages are displayed in a chronological order. In response to detecting a scrolling gesture comprising a substantially vertical movement of a user contact with the touch screen display, the display of messages are scrolled in accordance with a direction of the scrolling gesture. The detecting of the scrolling gesture is substantially independent of a horizontal position of the user contact with the touch screen display."

Considering the above, I think there's no doubt - the iPhone will finally get instant messaging features, but we have no idea yet about the time when we'll see it happening. Anyway, I am sure Santa won't catch us without instant messaging on our iPhones, but this may even happen as soon as June, together with the release of the 3G iPhone.