ONE patent Apple released in 2018 and recently released indicates that The company could say goodbye to the Digital Crown in the Apple Watch Series 8.
The Digital Crown, located on the side of the Apple Watch, allows navigation without touching the watch screen. It has been a feature of the Apple Watch since its release.
Instead of the digital crown, The patent shows optical sensors on the side of the watch, which would allow you to control gestures rather than physical contact.
Presumably, the user can swipe or make other finger gestures on the sensor instead of the screen, and that would allow you to navigate the screen.
The Apple Watch designs featured in the patent show a finger sliding over the new optical sensor on the right side. Instead of rotating the digital crown, users slide their finger over the sensor on the right edge.
The optical sensor looks much flatter than the existing Digital Crown, perhaps to accommodate the flat edge design we supposedly saw in the Apple Watch Series 7, but which didn’t materialize.
The optical sensor would also take up less space, allowing for features such as a larger battery or additional health monitoring sensors such as the putative blood glucose reader and blood pressure monitor.
Of course, this is all based solely on filing a patent, so we’ll have to wait for the Apple Watch Series 8 to debut to find out all the details.
