iPhones May Include Voice Control And Feedback In Future Models

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It’s not exactly anything new to have a hands free kit for your phone, especially if you do a lot of driving. But the folks out at Apple, who, let’s face it, pretty much thrive on innovation, may well have a whole different solution in mind: building that hands free kit directly into the phone itself. At least, that’s what a pair of recently unearthed patent docs had to say about it.

Apple patents fly thick and fast throughout the depths of the patent office, it seems like, and this newest batch joins an already hefty portfolio for the Cupertino brood. Some are even speculating that the hands free part may even be a secret feature to come with the still upcoming iOS 5 update, but that’s just speculation at this stage of things.

The hands free system patent details a new kind of audio feedback system that cuts down on the number of words in responses, making them shorter and more efficient to deal with. For example, say you called your mother from your car phone (which is never a good idea unless you had a hands free system to begin with), and she wasn’t home, instead of your audio system saying “Mother is not available”, it would say instead, “No mother”, or reducing it even further to a “negative sounding tone or beep”.  Interestingly, the system is slated to even be able to step up the word count, providing more information for those times when you’re screaming at said handset: “What do you MEAN, ‘no mother’?”

The second patent, meanwhile, dealt with the processing of voice commands, which often takes current hands free systems longer than it should to respond to commands; at least, that’s what Apple seems to think.

When, if ever, these particular patented items will find themselves incorporated into Apple gear is of course quite unclear. But it’s certainly an interesting idea, and one that will do quite a bit of collateral damage to suppliers of hands free add-on systems.

So what do you guys think here? Would you like to be able to tell your iPhone what to do just by actually telling it what to do? Or do you think that there’s just no point to such a system? Either way, we want to hear from you, so hit the comments section and tell us what you think!