Samsung Releases The Wallet App With a Striking Similarity to Apple's Passbook

The new Wallet application for Android carries store cards, event tickets, boarding passes, and coupons. As noted by The Verge, the resemblance to Apple's Passbook is striking, even down to the icon Samsung chose to use.

Like Passbook, it will store all of a user's cards in one location. It will also offer time- and location-based push notifications to make it easy for users to access their cards.

And again like Passbook, the software will also automatically update with information such as membership points available, or the gate from which a flight will be departing.

Partners also include a number of companies that were among the first adopters of Apple's Passbook: Major League Baseball, Lufthansa, and Walgreens, to name a few. Samsung's Wallet application will not support NFC payment features — something Apple's Passbook also lacks.

Samsung's announcement of Wallet, and its similarities to Apple's Passbook, are noteworthy because Apple for years has been accusing Samsung of copying its devices. The two companies are engaged in a number of patent infringement suits in which Apple has charged Samsung with copying the look and feel of the iPhone and the iPad.

Passbook debuted on the iPhone last year as part of the iOS 6 mobile operating system. It's become particularly popular in a trial run at Major League Baseball stadiums, prompting the league to announce this week that Passbook will be accepted at 13 MLB stadiums in the 2013 season.

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Apple Bags Another Patent, This Time Related To Power Consumption Display Brightness

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today officially granted Apple a patent (via AppleInsider) describing methods for automatically adjusting screen brightness to suit the content being displayed. The patent, which was originally filed for in mid-2006 and can actually be traced back to a separate 2002 application, addresses techniques for saving battery life on portable devices.

The improved techniques reduce power consumption by lowering display intensity at appropriate times. In one embodiment, the display intensity can be controlled depending on the type of content being displayed. For example, when displaying certain types of content, the display intensity can be lowered from its otherwise high, constant intensity level. In another embodiment, the display intensity can be controlled depending on the characteristics of the content being displayed. For example, when displaying images that are light, the display intensity can be lowered from its otherwise high, constant intensity level. In still another embodiment, the display intensity can be controlled depending on the type and characteristics of content being displayed.

Apple's battery-powered devices have long had the capability to automatically dim displays based on such criteria as power source (battery vs. wall power), ambient light levels and usage (dimming the display of a device that hasn't been used for a particular time interval). Dimming the screen based on content, such as when a particularly bright image is displayed, requires a more sophisticated approach, something that Apple has clearly been working on for some time.

Apple actually now uses a variation on this invention for its Passbook application in iOS 6 for the iPhone, automatically boosting the display's brightness to maximum when the app is launched in order to make it easier for scanners to read the 2D barcodes used on passes within the app.

The patent suggests that Apple's plans for content-sensitive automatic brightness adjustment could even extend as far as frame-by-frame or scene-by-scene adjustments when viewing videos, with users also being able to configure their own preferences for content-based brightness. [MacRumors]

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