Recent reports have suggested that patents for the foldable iPhone was filed since 2014. Samsung is the company with a higher privilege to register for such designs.
Design and Features
It is believed that Tim Cook is also interested in such an innovation for the company Apple. The CEO will love to see a foldable iPhone with a flexible OLED screen. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted the patent no. 9,504,170 for “flexible display devices”, which details a design for a hinged iPhone that can fold in two when not in use. The device would rely on flexible components such as an OLED display, metal support tools made of a nickel and titanium alloy called nitinol.
Apple also discussed the flexible polymers as a possible alternative to the nitinol design, with some versions of the phone coming with a chassis split into upper and lower sections. These sections will be the place where the phone hardware is attached via a single or multi-shaft hinge mechanism. This will allow the rotation so that the divided parts separately can move relative to one another. There will be a flexible printed circuit boards to allow the phone to be foldable, while the display is overlaid across the two portions of the handset.
Of course, companies quickly file patents in order to protect their designs, and that’s why Apple secured the patent for its foldable iPhone. But a patent doesn’t mean that the product is going to be made and make it to market. As we previously told you, Apple is expected to introduce a new iPhone with an OLED screen in 2017. Instead of being flexible, the display of this next OLED device will be an almost all-screen design.
Apple might make a foldable iPhone?
Whether we’ll see a foldable version of the iPhone in the coming years or not, it looks like Apple has already considered the idea. Hopefully, we can see it come to reality! Are you excited about a foldable iPhone?