March has been the month for published Apple 'AirPower' patent applications. As we get closer to AirPower coming to market, AirPower patents began rolling out on March 2nd and again on the 8th. If you thought that two patent applications would cover a wireless charging mat sufficiently, you'd be wrong, dead wrong. Today, the US Patent & Trademark Office published 6 new AirPower related patent applications that cover every little detail behind Apple's wireless multi-device charging pad imaginable that provide dozens of patent figures to explore.

For those who are engineers and/or Geek Squad types, you could check each of Apple's new AirPower patent applications below for extensive details.

20180090954: WIRELESS CHARGING MATS FOR PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICES

20180090955: WIRELESS CHARGING MATS WITH MULTI-LAYER TRANSMITTER COIL ARRANGEMENTS

20180090998: INTERCONNECTION STRUCTURES FOR WIRELESS CHARGING MATS

20180090999: WIRELESS CHARGING MAT WITH MULTIPLE COIL ARRANGEMENTS OPTIMIZED FOR DIFFERENT DEVICES

20180091000: MULTI-LAYER TRANSMITTER COIL ARRANGEMENT FOR WIRELESS CHARGING MATS

20180090973: WIRELESS CHARGING MAT WITH A TRANSMITTER COIL ARRANGEMENT INCLUDING INNER AND OUTER COILS HAVING DIFFERENT STRUCTURES

Flexible Battery Structure for next Gen Flexible / Scrollable Displays

In addition to AirPower patents, a new flexible battery structure patent filing surfaced today that's interesting. According to Apple, batteries often take up a substantial amount of space in a portable electronic device. As devices have grown increasingly more power hungry, greater amounts of space need to be dedicated to accommodate space for the batteries.

In addition to taking up space, the batteries are also often quite rigid, often making placement of the batteries in portions of a device designed to bend impractical. Apple's patent addresses these problems.

One of Apple's patent figures illustrated above shows us a side view of an exemplary electronic device (#500) which could include a flexible display (#502) which is coupled to the Battery Management Unit (BMU) to control the operation of a flexible battery integrated within flexible display .

In some embodiments, the flexible display could include thin layers of graphite designed to dissipate and spread heat generated by operation of a display of flexible display assembly and usage of the integrated flexible battery.

The flexible battery could also be distributed across the flexible display and allow it to transition from a rolled-up state as depicted in FIG. 5A to a flattened state as depicted in FIG. 5B.

Apple further states that "the BMU and main logic board could both be packaged within a housing into which the flexible display is configured to retract by a retraction mechanism that results in the flexible display being wound around a cylindrical member within a housing. In this way, the flexible display and flexible battery can make the electronic device substantially more portable and easy to carry when not in active use.

The design supports a scrollable display device as described in our patent report published in 2017 titled "Apple Enters Race with Samsung in Developing a Next Generation Scrollable Smartphone." A few of the patent figures are illustrated below.

Apple's patent application #20180090730 was filed back in Q3 2017. For more details, check out the invention here. Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.

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