It's definitely been a week about alternative smartphone form factors. On Monday Patently Apple posted a report titled "A new Rumor Claims that Apple is working with Several Supply Chain Partners in Preparing for Future Foldable Devices." Coincidentally on Tuesday, Apple was granted a patent for foldable devices. Yesterday we pointed out in a new report that Apple has a number of scrollable/rollable smartphone patents on record (01, 02, 03 and 04) as Chinese smartphone vendor is set to launch the world's first "scrollable" display based smartphone.

Today, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a major continuation patent application from Apple that relates to "flexible display devices" that is part of an ongoing project that began way back in 2011. Apple has already been granted six patents for this invention and they're now shooting for their seventh granted patent.  

Our cover graphic presents patent FIG. 22 from Apple's patent which is a perspective side view of an illustrative flexible electronic device in a tri-folded closed position.

Patently Apple covered Apple's 2019 continuation patent here which was later granted in August 2020.

So, What's New Today?

Being a continuation patent, what's new is always found in Apple's patent claims. Here, Apple is legally able to update an invention with new technology, update their patent claims for legal protection against competitors or patent trolls and to generally keep their invention up to date as the years go by.

Today's patent claim additions are many, making this a major update. Below are the patent claims that are new to this invention that are significant in nature.

Claim #1: An electronic device, comprising: a housing; a display in the housing that produces display content; a sensor that detects a squeeze of the housing; and control circuitry that changes an operational state of the electronic device in response to the squeeze of the housing.

Claim #2: The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the housing comprises a sidewall and wherein the sensor detects the squeeze along the sidewall of the housing.

Claim #3: The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the sensor is located along the sidewall.

Claim #4: The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the display comprises an organic light-emitting diode display.

Claim #8: The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the control circuitry changes a volume associated with audio in response to the squeeze of the housing.

Claim #9: The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the housing comprises a flexible material.

Claim #10: The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the display has a bent edge.

Claim #11: An electronic device, comprising: a housing having a housing sidewall; an organic-light emitting diode display mounted in the housing; a sensor that detects flexing of the housing sidewall; and control circuitry that changes a volume of audio output in response to the flexing of the housing sidewall.

Claim #14: The electronic device defined in claim 11 wherein the organic light-emitting diode display comprises a flexible polymer substrate.

Patent Claim #16: An electronic device, comprising: a housing having sidewalls; a sensor that detects squeeze input along at least one of the sidewalls; a display mounted in the housing; and control circuitry that takes an action with respect to an incoming cellular telephone call in response to the squeeze input.

Claim #18: The electronic device defined in claim 16 wherein the display comprises organic light-emitting diode pixels.

Claim #20: The electronic device defined in claim 16 wherein at least part of the display is curved.

Below are a few other patent figures associated with this invention starting with FIG. 1 which is a perspective view of an illustrative flexible electronic device; FIG. 6A is a top view of an illustrative main logic board with cutaway portions for providing flexibility.

(Click on image to Enlarge)

Apple's patent FIG. 15 above is a perspective view of an illustrative flexible housing having portions of different flexibility in different dimensions; and FIG. 18 is a rear perspective view of an illustrative flexible housing having multiple multi-stable portions providing more than two multi-stable positions.

Apple's continuation patent application number 20200363900 that was published today by the U.S. Patent Office was filed back in Q3 2020. Considering that this is a continuation patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.