Apple recently told developers that they were not allowed to use location information to serve up related ads… but Apple still wants to track your location. Yes, there’s more to it than that: they actually want to enable location sharing with the person on the other end of the call. One device would ask for the location of the other and — depending on your settings — would automatically show that info on your screen. We’re guessing that it’s an optional service, but it’s still kinda creepy.

Practical use? We’re having a hard time thinking of one… still thinking… umm… maybe you’re at Disney World and you want to grab your friends coordinates so you can calculate the quickest route to them. Yeah, that’s still pretty lame.

It’s something that Apple mentioned in passing about video calling. The patent clarifies what type of call would use this location technology:

“Note that the reference to ‘voice call’ here is not limited to a conventional, sound-only conversation. It may also include video of the two users, synchronized with their audio.”

It’s a very small reference, and we’re pretty sure that Apple is just covering their bases for the future. If they want to patent the technology, it only makes sense to include video calling as well… Marty McFly says we’ll be there by 2015. This location patent was actually filed in 2008, so this isn’t breaking news but it’s definitely something that we’d love to see added to the iPhone. Now we need to come up with a purpose for it.

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