When contemplating the use of biometrics for the iPhone, Apple worked on Touch ID, Face ID and actually considered using a user's heartbeat to open an iPhone – one of Apple's lamest ideas ever recorded in my opinion. Though you have to remember back to 2007 Apple keynote introducing the iPhone. It was here that Steve Jobs made the audience laugh putting up a slide of a fake phone patent filed showing an iPod with a rotary dial as a possible future Apple phone as presented below.

Yesterday the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple a patent for opening an iPhone with a user's heartbeat that dates back to a 2008 filing, a year after the iPhone's debut. Apple went on to develop and introduce both Touch ID and Face ID. Will Apple now go back to their Heart ID concept? I'll say a big no on that, though some may disagree.

Going out on a limb, there could be a small chance that Apple could work such a biometric feature in a future Apple Watch which already offers a heart rate feature. While even that's a longshot – it at least keeps the door open.  

Apple's fourth granted patent on this subject cover an electronic device, shown as an iPhone, could use several approaches to identify the user of the electronic device and provide access to the user's private and personal information, or to load the user's personal profile. In some embodiments, the electronic device can identify or authenticate a user based on an input provided by the user, such as a password or key provided using an input mechanism. In some embodiments, the electronic device can include one or more sensors operative to detect a fingerprint, voice print, facial features, or other biometric characteristics of a user.

Other biometric-based approaches could be used to authenticate a user. In some embodiments, an electronic device could authenticate a user based on the attributes of the user's heartbeat. For example, the durations of particular portions of a user's heart rhythm, or the relative size of peaks of a user's electrocardiogram (EKG) can be processed and compared to a stored profile to authenticate a user of the device. To detect a user's heartbeat or heart rhythm, however, the electronic device must provide at least two leads that the user contacts to detect the user's cardiac signals.

Although the leads can simply be placed on the exterior surface of the device housing, for example in a defined location where the user may place a finger, this approach is not aesthetically pleasing, and may cause some prospective buyers to consider other devices. In addition, such an approach may require the user to perform a specific authentication action—viz., placing a finger on the one or more leads, then unlocking or accessing the electronic device features (e.g., by moving a slider across the screen). This additional step may in fact be so encumbering that users disable the authentication feature and instead use an unsecured electronic device.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 below is a schematic view of an illustrative electronic device for receiving the output of one or more sensors; FIG. 3 is a schematic view of an illustrative electronic device having several integrated leads; and FIG. 6 is a flowchart of an illustrative process for performing an electronic device operation based on a user's cardiac signal.

For full details, review granted patent 12048547. Safari user's click here; Click here for Chrome based browsers and Firefox.