Want an iPhone with a combination lock?

A recent patent application by Apple shows that the Cupertino electronics giant has some interest in providing a simulated graphic combination lock for use in locking and unlocking the iPhone.

Recent Patent Office documents show that Apple wants to patent an iPhone process that would make it possible to hide your iPhone behind an access PIN that acts like a combination safe lock, emulating the way that the locks on safes often operate. The patent application is titled “Motion Based Input Selection” and would, in essence, mimic the actions of a standard 3-number combination lock. The user would turn the iphone, just as one does to change from landscape to portrait mode but more accurately, to select the combination’s numbers from a round dial similar to those on office safes, according to an IntoMobile story. Presumably, in final form, the digital combination lock control would look similar to the real thing.

Such a software mechanism yields much greater security than does the current four-integer setting used to unlock the iPhone at startup. That would be a nice feature to have in terms of basic security for the phone, but it becomes much more important if one envisions applications which should have more security than the four-integer software lock provides. There are already fairly critical applications on the iPhone that save passwords so that anyone in physical possession of the phone, and who can break a simple 4-integer PIN, can access all information implicit in using the phone itself.

Email, phone, and texting access could be bad enough if your phone was stolen and cracked, but how about online access to your money? That scenario becomes a certainty if you want to secure your iPhone’s RFID-based NFC (near field communication) eWallet functionality – which has been rumored to be a likely new built-in application for the next-generation iPhone 4G. It makes little sense to have to type in a password every time you want to pay using RFID (mainly defeating the ease of use of the RFID system), so the login for the phone itself becomes critical. The iPhone combination lock would be an excellent way to better safeguard that sort of bank-account access application. Something like this combination lock, then, could be coming soon to an iPhone near you.

• 

Related posts:

1. Apple could lock out jailbreakers [sulfur permeates the air]
2. Malicious website can lock up iPhone/iPod Touch and crash Safari
3. A patent for iPhone biometric sensors
4. Apple will defend the iPhone
5. Apple patents iPhone movement, vibration, and pleasure