Microsoft working on combining Mixed Reality with smartphones: Report

In its latest patent, Microsoft wants to combine smartphones with mixed reality so users can interact better with the virtual environment.

Microsoft's Alex Kipman, the man responsible for the HoloLens augmented reality device, presents the HoloLens 2 ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 24, 2019. (REUTERS)

Microsoft is planning to combine smartphones with improved Mixed Reality (MR), a new patent filed by the company indicates, a report said.

In the patent, Microsoft is talking about the different input methods that could be leveraged when combined with smartphones to allow users to interact better with the virtual environment, web portal MSPoweruser said in the report on Thursday.

"The Virtual Reality (VR) experience may allow a user to interact with virtual objects in the experience. Various input devices for facilitating such interaction exist, such as hand-held controllers that provide translational and rotational input," the report quoted Microsoft as noting in the patent.

Along with taking inputs from the phone, the software giant has highlighted the idea of expanding phone features by adding MR overlay.

"The VR experience may represent a representation of the input device that visually displays the device and also provides a user interface for interacting with the device and the VR," the patent reportedly added.

The patent shows that the software giant is exploring new ways of incorporating VR and MR in its future devices, especially smartphones.

However, Microsoft is not the only company thinking towards working on improving MR, VR and Augmented Reality (AR) experiences and mix them up with future smartphones.

Recently, Apple published an update titled, "Systems, methods and graphical user interfaces for interacting with Augmented and Virtual Reality environments", as part of an existing patent filed in August 2018, the media had reported.

The patent filed by the iPhone-maker also shows that the company could be planning to develop an AR-based headset that would work alongside an iPhone to enable users experience an environment where computer images are overlaid on the real world.