Apple To Introduce In-Call File Transfer on iPhone?

Talk about a nice feature to have. Have you ever been in a situation where you are on the phone talking to a colleague, and you want to send the other party a file without disconnecting? That’s exactly what the latest iPhone patent tries to address. Apparently, Apple has been exploring the possibility of adding In-Call File Transfer feature to iPhone to make it easier for iPhone owners to send files and talk on the phone at the same time. Essentially, Apple is going to give us an interface, making it easy to send files to all the parties involved in a phone call. The system will recognize their information and send the information to the right location.

It’s not clear when Apple intends to introduce these features. We may see some of these features in iPhone 4.0. But it’s not too hard to understand why such a feature can be attractive to both individuals and businesses. Since the system provides support for conference calls as well, you can potentially share videos, images, and audio files with your colleagues and partners during your calls. It certainly beats the alternative.

We know from the patent that file transfer can be done over WiFi, WiMax, Edge, GPRS, and GSM. So you can always use faster connections for sending those larger files. The details are sketchy at this point, and it’s hard to guess how at&t reacts to this feature. While I am not foreseeing any additional fees, I wouldn’t put it past at&t to somehow make this a “premium” feature. Whatever the case, don’t expect to see this feature implemented anytime soon (not in the next couple of months anyway).