Smart phone apps have been steadily becoming more tactile for users, able to conduct a wide range of functions from diagnosing illnesses based on the sound of a cough to finding lost coins on the beach. Now, the device manufacturers are following suit, as can be seen from a Nokia app called Situations that automatically detects the type of situation the user is in - work mode, reading a bedtime story to the kids - and adjusts the smartphone accordingly.

Users can manually define situations, like "In a meeting", "Sleeping", "Watching TV", or  "Playing with kids."

With the application running in the background, the device will change the ringtone or make the phone go silent, or louder, or turn vibra on/off. Or it could answer missed calls with SMS. The application is significant as it represents context awareness for a smartphone, GigaOM writes. "As the numbers of applications starts to go up on our phones, context awareness could help solve the app-discovery dilemma as well. Most importantly, context awareness would essentially be key to us experiencing the Internet in a more meaningful way on our handsets."

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Tech innovation, though, isn’t stopping with context awareness - or limited to just smartphones despite their near ubiquity. In related news, Microsoft has filed for a patent application to construct a display that uses technical tricks to convince users they are actually touching the ridges, bumps and textures of a displayed image. (via New Scientist). The patent is a departure from previous screen that provide an illusion of texture - such as 3-D imagery.

Microsoft's patent suggests it can produce a real texture on the screen using pixel-sized shape-memory plastic cells that can be ordered to protrude from the surface on command, New Scientist explains. The company is not aiming to produce this technology for smartphone devices, according to the inventor, Erez Kikin-Gil - but rather at large table-sized computing displays.