Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple a patent that relates to a future hardware feature that is long overdue. Apple notes that in some systems, a display may routinely be exposed to ambient sunlight. If care is not taken, reflections of the sunlight off of the display will wash out the display content. Apple's granted patent sets out to remedy this irritating reality with mobile devices such as an iPhones, iPad, MacBook and/or Apple Watch. While Apple does provide setting adjustments for this, I've never found it to be a satisfying solution.

Adaptive Exterior Display

A system may have a display that includes a plurality of light sources such as light-emitting diodes. The display may be an exterior display that is routinely operated in daytime conditions where ambient light levels are very high (e.g., due to ambient sunlight). The exterior display may normally have a given orientation relative to the ground (e.g., perpendicular the ground). This results in sunlight striking the display from a known range of angles.

If care isn't taken, bright ambient light may reduce contrast and wash out the display content. To preserve contrast in an exterior display, the display may include a sunlight blocking element. The sunlight blocking element may be static or dynamic (adjustable).

A static sunlight blocking element may include a louver film with asymmetric light blocking portions. The display may include one or more additional adjustable components to optimize the display for real-time ambient lighting conditions.

The system may include an ambient light sensor that is configured to determine ambient light levels. Based on the detected ambient light level, control circuitry in the system may adjust one or more adjustable components in the display.

The display may include an adjustable diffuser that has at least two states with different haze levels. When detected ambient light levels are low, the adjustable diffuser may be placed in a state with high diffusion to mitigate screen door effect in the display. When detected ambient light levels are high, the adjustable diffuser may be placed in a state with low diffusion to increase contrast in the display.

The display may include an adjustable tint layer that has at least two states with different transmission levels. When detected ambient light levels are low, the adjustable tint layer may be placed in a state with high transmission to increase display efficiency. When detected ambient light levels are high, the adjustable tint layer may be placed in a state with low transmission to increase contrast in the display. 

Click on the image below to Enlarge and to read about some of the key aspects of this invention.

More specifically, to improve contrast in display #14 in the presence of ambient sunlight, an ambient light rejection element (sometimes referred to as a sunlight rejection element) may be included in the display. FIG. 3 is a cross-sectional side view of an illustrative display with a sunlight rejection element. As shown in FIG. 3, sunlight rejection element 46 may be interposed between diffuser layer #36 and cover layer #40. Ideally, the sunlight rejection element passes as much of display light #42 as possible while simultaneously preventing ambient light #44 (sometimes referred to as ambient sunlight) from being reflected towards viewer #48.

There are many possible ways to implement the sunlight rejection element. In one possible arrangement, the sunlight rejection element in FIG. 3 may be a heavily tinted layer. The sunlight rejection element may transmit only 10% of incident light and absorbs the remaining 90% of incident light.

Due to ambient sunlight having to pass through the sunlight rejection element twice to reach the viewer/user, this type of sunlight rejection element reduces the brightness of sunlight reflections to 1% of the starting sunlight brightness.

For more details, review Apple's granted patent 11934063. This could be a killer feature if it really delivers.

In 2022, MacRumors presented a report about how the iPhone 14 Pro models would be twice as bright to assist users read their screens in bright sunny conditions. This is something all mobile users want. However, brightness of the display isn't Apple's solution to this issue of trying to view our displays in sunny conditions. Today's granted patent provides us with a far more technical solution.