Apple Inc.

Eric S Winokur

Andreas Johannes Koeberl

Sai Zhang

John Brandon Laflen

Ari Y Benbasat

Tyler S Atura Bushnell

Mir Hamza Mahmood

Sabino Joseph Pietrangelo, Ii

Branislav Jovanovic

Matthew J Schwendeman

Liqun Yang

Andrew William Shorten

Narmadha Vijayakumar

Giovanni Gozzini

Timothy Michael Johnson

Joseph W Colosimo

Leah M Gum

Robert Leo Sheridan

Sora Kim

Matthew Dominic Hollands

Steven N Hanna

Andy J Zhou

Emmanuell Jose Merced-Grafals

Tyler D Holmes

Nitya Ramdas

An electronic device can include a housing, a back cover, a structural member, and a sensing circuit. The housing can at least partially define an internal volume of the electronic device and the back cover can define at least a portion of the internal volume and be connected to the housing. The structural member can be disposed against the back cover and at least partially within the internal volume, the structural member including an electronic component. The sensing circuit can be disposed in the internal volume and electrically coupled to the electronic component. The sensing circuit can detect an amount of charge of the electronic component as part of a user proximity sensor of the electronic device.

Using a structural internal element as a capacitive element to sense proximity

Systems, methods, and devices are described that may mitigate display pixel and touch crosstalk noise. A touch processing system may compensate touch scan data to reduce the noise based on a luminance value. An image processing system may determine the luminance value based on image data and a display brightness value of an electronic display. Using the compensated touch scan data, the touch processing system may determine a proximity of a capacitive object to at least one touch sense region of the electronic display.

Time-synchronized pixel array and touch array crosstalk mitigation systems and methods

Techniques for rejecting apparent (but false) touches caused by objects such as water droplets located in areas with parasitic capacitive paths to ground are disclosed. To minimize these false touches, one or more guard conductors can be located in proximity to the housing and driven with a stimulation signal to shield objects from being capacitively coupled to ground through the housing. In some examples images of touch can be obtained from a non-bootstrapped or bootstrapped scan and also an extended bootstrapped scan wherein the guard conductor is driven with a stimulation signal that has the same characteristics as the stimulation signal being applied to the sensed touch nodes. In some examples, the results of the extended bootstrapped scan can be subtracted from the non-bootstrapped or bootstrapped scan to identify and reject apparent touches resulting from capacitive coupling to ground.

Touch sensing with water rejection

In some examples, a touch screen can perform a first touch scan to obtain first touch data and a second touch scan to obtain second touch data. The touch data resulting from the second touch scan may exclude respective noise (e.g., display-to-touch crosstalk (DTX) noise) or may include a reduced amount of the respective noise. In some examples, the electronic device can subtract the second touch data from the first touch data to obtain an estimate of the noise in the first touch data. In some examples, this noise estimate can be subtracted from the first touch data and an action can be performed based on the first touch data with the noise estimate removed.

Multi-scan touch sensing system and method

In some examples, an electronic device can classify patches of touch data obtained by a touch screen as corresponding to intentional user inputs or not corresponding to intentional user inputs. The device can include a touch screen on a first side of housing of the device and a drive electrode on a second side of the housing of the device in some examples. In some examples, the drive electrode on the second side of the housing of the device can apply a signal to the body of the user and the device can classify patches of touch data including characteristics of this signal as corresponding to intentional touches provided by the user. The device can perform subsequent operations in response to intentional touches provided by the user and forgo performing operations in response to patches of touch data that do not correspond to intentional touches provided by the user.

Systems and methods for improved touch screen selectivity and sensitivity

Thermal compensation can be applied to force measurements of a force-sensitive button. A temperature differential between an object and the force-sensitive button can result in changes in the reconstructed force by the force sensor due to thermal effects rather than actual user force, which in turn can result in degraded performance of the force sensor (e.g., false positive or inconsistent activation force). In some examples, a force-sensitive button can include a force sensor configured to measure an amount of force applied to the force-sensitive button, and a temperature sensor configured to measure a temperature associated with the force sensor. The measured temperature can be used to compensate the amount of force measured by the force sensor based on the temperature associated with the force sensor. In some examples, the thermal compensation can be applied when an object is detected contacting the force-sensitive button (i.e., when rapid temperature differentials can occur).

Thermal compensation for force-sensitive button

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Eric S Winokur