The Apple Pencil was already the best iPad Pro accessory for budding digital artists, but a new patent suggests it could become even more useful in the not-too-distant future.

The patent imagines an Apple Pencil with a built-in light detector instead of manually selecting colors on the screen. This means that when you point the new Apple Pencil at something in the real world (such as a shade of paint or a flower), that color will instantly be available to doodle on the screen.

"The color sensor may have multiple photodetectors, each measuring light in a different respective color channel," the patent reads. "The color sensor can also have one or more light emitting devices. The control circuitry can use the light emitting devices to illuminate an external object while the photodetectors can be used to measure the reflected light to determine the color of the external object.

This patent is brand new, having been filed in November 2019 and just published on Thursday, but perhaps we shouldn't get too excited just because a brand new Apple Pencil is right around the corner. Apple has indeed filed for a lot of patents, over 2,500 last year alone, but not all of them will see the light of day. In fact, Apple filed a similar patent six years ago, and the fact that we have yet to see the technology put to use in any obvious way is worth reflecting on.

Still, the utility of being able to extract color from the real world is fairly obvious, and it would be nice to see the Apple Pencil get an upgrade. There are now two generations, and the new models are not "revolutionary," but firmly "evolutionary." Wireless charging, flat edges to prevent rolling off, and some simple gesture commands have been added. Each pencil is compatible with a different iPad, so both remain on sale.

Other innovations on the iPad Pro include a Mini-LED display. It offers the same excellent contrast ratio, truer black tones, and higher brightness as the OLED display. Mini-LEDs, as their name suggests, accomplish this by using small LEDs (light-emitting diodes) to backlight the display.

In late June, it was reported that an iPad Pro with a Mini LED display had entered test production. However, it is not known if this Apple Pencil breakthrough will be ready in time.