Apple was granted yet another armament in their massive arsenal of U.S. patents, where the graphical user interface that currently sees action in iOS will have its “hit region” which is roughly the size of a virtual keyboard’s buttons, and is based on predictive text data. After all, this particular patent is more or less an elegant solution to the issue of entering text on a mobile device’s relatively small display. Apple’s U.S. Patent No. 8,232,973 for a “Method, device, and graphical user interface providing word recommendations for text input” will effectively enlarge the virtual keyboard’s buttons area based on a predictive input system without the need to resize the visual keyboard asset.
The patent does read as follows, “However, the size of these portable communication devices also restricts the size of the text input device, such as a physical or virtual keyboard, in the portable device. With a size-restricted keyboard, designers are often forced to make the keys smaller or overload the keys. Both may lead to typing mistakes and thus more backtracking to correct the mistakes. This makes the process of communication by text on the devices inefficient and reduces user satisfaction with such portable communication devices.”