iPhone 5 will be Radically Different – Radial Menus and Radio

We have all come to expect the annual iPhone revision and June 2011 will be no different.

The thing is Apple will have to amaze those, like me, that have had an iPhone since the original or 3G even.

Yeah, the body has changed (for better or worse) and we’ve seen incremental additions and tweaks to the now named iOS.

Well, according to a new patent filing that iOS is going to be a heck of a lot different on the iPhone 5.

If this next version of iOS is indeed intended for the iPhone 5 there’ll be what’s being called “radial menus”.

If you check out the pic (click to enlarge) you’ll see the menu for programs expands 360 degrees, which gives you more options without using up all the screen real estate. Not groundbreaking on laptops and such but for a mobile phone and probably iPod Touch and iPad? – ding dong!

Now – you could go read the patent filing if you wish but I have to agree with Unwired and just use this extract:

“…The novel radial menu techniques of some embodiments include (i) non-uniform spacing of menu items, (ii) the use of shading or highlighting within a region associated with an item to indicate the present selectability of the item, and (iii) the use of radial gestures for opening sub-menus and the subsequent display of the sub-menu.”

To me that all means that when you hold down an icon, in a long keypress stylee, a radial menu will pop up and options expand with a finger swipe.

That sounds pretty neat to me and will look fab on the iPad (not sure if it will appear on iPad 2 or if we’ll have to wait til iPad 3 though) and it should allow iPhone 5 to stand away from its myriad competitors.

Apple also looks set to bring AM, FM and Satellite radio to the new iPhone after filing a patent for radio mapping.

The patent, which was approved last week by the US Patent and Trademark Office would hand the fruity phone AM and FM radio capabilities thanks to an FM radio receiver added to the top right corner of the device.

The Apple radio for iPhone patent falls in line with hints towards the arrival of a radio peripheral card for MacBooks.

Do you like? Are you bothered? Would you rather stick with Android or WinPho7? Let me know below 🙂