A couple of reports have surfaced this year (one and two) about the 2017 anniversary iPhone introducing a new form factor that has curved glass for a better grip. We originally covered a detailed Apple patent about a curved iPhone based on an OLED flexible display back in 2013. Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals more of the technical aspects behind a flexible OLED display with bent edges that could apply to a wide range of devices in including an iPhone, iPad, iPod, a device embedded in eyeglasses, wearables or a MacBook.

Apple notes in their filing that "To minimize the amount of the inactive border area of display #14 that is visible to a user, one or more edges of display may be bent. As an example, the edge of the display to which a display driver circuit is mounted using a chip-on-flex arrangement may be folded under the active area of the display. An illustrative display with a bent edge portion is shown in FIG. 5" as presented below.

Apple later notes that "The relative thicknesses of substrate #30 and coating #84 and the relative modulus of elasticity values for the substrate and coating determine the location of the neutral stress plane within the layers of bent display region 14B.

Apple patent application 20160204366 titled "Flexible Display Panel with Bent Substrate" 20150331508 was filed in January 2016. Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time. The graphic below is from Apple's 2013 patent filing.

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