Having your phone ring at the wrong time is painful. The opera. A funeral. A test. A meeting. An interview. A wrong-ring can wreck a week.

Obviously, when the moment comes in which your pocket begins to produce sonic waves bordering on the Richter, you want to turn that piece of shit off as quickly as possible. It can, sadly, take time. Passwords, pockets, fumbling, it’s all too much.

Ring ring ring. Red face. Embarrassing. Mean looks. Alas. Ring.

Thank the stars that Microsoft has an idea, for which it has applied for patent protection, that may help us all in the future to silence the damn phone when it’s shooting off when it shouldn’t.

Enter the whack patent. No, not in the ‘that’s whack’ sense, or the ‘whack off’ context [apologies for the title of this post -AW], but the ‘whack = hit’ sort of way. The patent idea is that you hit your phone, and it shuts up. Via PatentBolt, the following:

‘Whack based audio control module.’ Yep. Welcome to Friday. From the patent application itself: “The techniques described herein can be used for controlling an audio signal of the mobile device in response to a whacking of the mobile device.”

I hereby dub this the clapper of the modern world. Microsoft, please bake this into Windows Phone. You do, and I’ll buy a Lumia 920 and come back into the fold.

Top Image Credit: Bryan Brenneman

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