Samsung wrist displaySamsung has filed a U.S. patent that reportedly allows smartwatches to project interactive displays onto the back of your hand. The patent illustrations make it very plain just how this could work as a reading or a control device. And since Samsung has been a pioneer of smartwatch technology as one of the early adopters of the Android Wear platform, never mind its own devices running a homegrown OS, it’s not hard to imagine a host of Android Wear apps coming out courtesy of Samsung, ready to take advantage of this technology.

The Samsung patent filing states that: “The wear-able device includes an image projector configured to project a virtual user interface (UI) screen, a camera configured to capture an image, and a processor configured to detect a target area from the image captured by the camera, control the image projector to project the virtual UI screen, which corresponds to at least one of a shape and a size of the target area, onto the target area, and perform a function corresponding to a user interaction that is input through the virtual UI screen.”

None of which implies that the device will ever get made. But if it does, there are quite a number of Android Wear applications that could use it to give an e-reading experience from your smartwatch. Attopediea, for example, displays cotdown versions of Wikipedia articles on your smartwatch screen. And an application like Reader for Android Wear could make a very good job of turning plain smartwatch screen mirroring into actual ebook reading on the back of your hand. If you want to wear your favorite ebook, that is …

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