Things are heating up in the patent wars with Android’s market share
growing while the iPhone’s growth has shrunk. Both Apple and HTC have
hit each other hard in the press while Cupertino has taken the
competition to court over multiple alleged patent claims.

Wired
takes a look at those patents and envisions just what Google’s Android
phones would look like if Apple won every part of the suit. Short
answer: back to the drawing board for Android and HTC.

For
starters, there’s a number of just sheer aesthetic issues at play. The
one near-constant about Apple products is that they are gorgeous.
Layout, design, iconography, everything. There’s a reason Macs are the
chosen computers for graphic designers and a lot of that has to do with
how attentive the computer maker is to graphical interface.

Stripped
of one patent, that guiding “Time-based, non-constant translation of
user interface objects between states," in other words that technology
that reflows your apps when you delete one from a row, an Android’s
phone would instead leave a gap. This would resemble what happens when
you delete a shortcut from a desktop computer. The resultant gappy icon
set would have to be manually moved and rearranged, leading to a
cluttered look, a small hassle, but one with serious aggravations for
the user.

Image Source: Wired.com

Then there’s how the iPhone scrolls. "Touch screen
device, method and graphical user interface for determining commands by
applying heuristics” refers to how when you begin scrolling with your
finger, the iPhone locks in the direction for a smoother transition.
With that gone, your Android phone would wiggle and swerve, dependent on
the slightest non-linear gesture, causing orientation headaches. To get
around this, Google’s phone could add ugly navigation arrows or scroll
bars along the side, eating up valuable display real estate.

This
doesn’t even get into deeper functionality, such as how Android phones
shut down GPS to conserve power when the battery is low or the swipe
based unlock mechanism or sleep modes or even multitasking (yes, the
iPhone offers limited multitasking, such as looking at a map while
listening to the iPod).

Simply put, if Apple wins their lawsuit
(something the folks at HTC and Google should be preparing for in any
case), the future for Android phones isn’t pretty.