No matter how hard Apple tries to lock down its new product plans, there’s always some inevitable leak or the other. And more often than not, it emanates from the US patent office. The latest in the series are a bunch of applications that may give us the best look yet at what the iPhones of the near future might look like.
The patent office recently awarded Apple a patent for ‘flexible electronic devices’, which ‘may include a flexible display, a flexible housing, and one or more flexible internal components configured to allow the flexible electronic device to be deformed.’
What could Apple do with a flexible iPhone? For one, it could avoid another ‘Bendgate’, since the device would be designed to be “folded for storage (eg in a pocket)”. But it could also offer a completely new user interface beyond the touch display and standard features such as sliders and rocker switches. For example, a twist of the device could instruct the phone to switch on or off, answer a call, start an app, change volume, or start playing a song or movie. Such a phone would also pass Nokia’s old drop test with flying colours: as Apple notes in the patent, “rigid electronic devices may be vulnerable to damage in the event of an impact such as a drop of the device on a hard surface.”
“Flexible electronic devices may be more resistant to damage during impact events such as drops because the flexible device may bend or deform while absorbing the impact. Deformation of this type may increase the duration of an impact thereby reducing the impulse received by other components of the flexible device,” it added.
As for materials used to create flexible housing, Apple leaves it fairly open ended, citing “deformable material such as plastic, thin glass, fiber composites, thin metal (eg, aluminum, etc), fabric, silicone, other suitable materials, or a combination of these materials”.
