Apple on Tuesday was granted a U.S. patent for the graphical user interface used in iOS which changes the “hit region” size of a virtual keyboard’s buttons based on predictive text data.
In an elegant solution to the problem of entering text on a mobile device’s small screen, Apple’s U.S. Patent No. 8,232,973 for a “Method, device, and graphical user interface providing word recommendations for text input” enlarges the effective area of the virtual keyboard’s buttons based on a predictive input system without resizing the visual keyboard asset.