RIM to use music rhythm and pattern to unlock future smartphones.

The battle of the operating systems continues to intensify and the latest advancement in technology comes from Canadian smartphone manufacturer, Research in Motion. Gone are days when one just tapped a bunch of physical buttons on their smartphone to unlock it and with improvements in all smartphone features; the ability to unlock a handset has taken on a cool turn. Swipe to unlock and then putting in a password was so 2007, when Apple introduced their first iPhone, Android did much better when they introduced the pattern to unlock feature. Android outdid themselves once more when they introduced the face unlocking feature in their latest operating software, Ice Cream Sandwich. Now it appears that BlackBerry attempts to go one step ahead and launch a whole new sort of unlocking feature by using rhythms as well as patterns on their upcoming smartphones.

According to a report by N4BB, “Research in Motion filed a patent back in 2006, which describes users tapping a pattern on a device to unlock or lock the device or allow access to a specific application. The patent goes even a step further to describe how the user must tap in a pattern and in a specific rhythm. This works by taking into account the accelerometer data for how hard you tap the screen. This way, others cannot replicate the same way to unlock a device.”

With this patent filed in 2006, Research in Motion in all probability will use it in their future operating systems and with their attempt to make a huge impact in the smartphone segment, this inclusion in their OS will surely do them some good.Though BlackBerry has an overall huge market share in India, the brand is having a rather unsuccessful period across the rest of the world with Android and iOS stealing the limelight.

Research in Motion is set to debut their upcoming operating system, BlackBerry 10, later this year with the BlackBerry London being the first handset to receive this software. Would we see this cool unlocking tool in BlackBerry 10? We certainly hope so.