Apple fine tunes patent that outlines a possible future iPhone with a wraparound display

Samsung has popularized and mainstreamed soi-disant phablets, then Apple followed suit by making its iPhones more sizably voluminous. And with last year’s relinquishment of the Galaxy S6 with a curved screen, legitimate questions arose as to whether Apple should engineer an iPhone with a wraparound exhibit.

Afore you jump straight to the comments, consider Apple’s patent applications for an “Electronic contrivance with wrapped exhibit,” which surfaced Thursday in the Cumulated States Patent and Trademark Office’s database.

As PatentlyApple points out, it’s a more finely tuned version of Apple’s two pristine patent filings discovered in Europe’s Patent Office database, which relate to curved-screen phones and utilizing a Liquidmetal process to achieve the iPhone’s design.

A material such as sapphire, other crystalline materials or other transparent materials may be utilized in composing the hollow exhibit cover structure.

A flexible exhibit, such as an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) exhibit layer, is then wrapped around the longitudinal axis to cover the interior surface of the hollow exhibit cover structure. The flexible exhibit layer is at least partially covered by the front portion and the curved side portion of the exhibit cover structure.

“The flexible exhibit layer may have edges that abut without overlapping, may have overlapping edges, or may have edges that protrude through an aperture in a fortification structure along a seam,” Apple expounds.

The contrivance may use one or more sensors to accumulate information on rotational kineticism of the contrivance in order to exhibit content on the flexible exhibit layer accordingly. In other words, such cylindrical exhibit would rotate content as the contrivance is turned, which could be handy in certain games (above: a maze example) and for scrolling face side content with a backside gesture (as pictured below).

And when the contrivance is laid flat on a surface, it would automatically scroll content such as stock quotes, sports scores, news headlines and so forth around the surface of its exhibit, not unlike Samsung’s Galaxy S6 edge.

Today’s patent application credits Apple engineers Scott Myers, Derek Wright and Fletcher Rothkopf as its inventors.


Source: USPTO via PatentlyApple