On Thursday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a patent application from Apple that relates to a hybrid display that may include different display portions with different resolutions. The high resolution display portion may be positioned in a main viewing area for the viewer whereas the low resolution display portion may be positioned in a peripheral viewing area.

Hybrid Displays

Smartglasses and/or other HMDs may have a display that displays content to a user. The smartglasses have support structures that support the display on the user's head. The head-mounted device may also include a lens module through which the display is viewable.

The display may be a hybrid display. The hybrid display may include different display portions with different resolutions. The high resolution display portion may be positioned in a main viewing area for the viewer whereas the low resolution display portion may be positioned in a peripheral viewing area for the viewer. This is a low cost way to increase the field-of-view of the display.

The high resolution display portion may have a silicon backplane. The low resolution display portion may have a different type of backplane such as a thin-film transistor backplane. The different display portions may optionally share a common organic light-emitting diode (OLED) layer such that light is emitted from the same plane across both display portions. The low resolution display portion may be a bottom-emission OLED display portion or a top-emission OLED display portion. When the low resolution display portion is a top-emission OLED display portion, vias may be included that electrically connect a silicon substrate for the high resolution display portion to the common OLED layer.

Apple's patent FIG. 4 below is a cross-sectional side view of an illustrative hybrid display having a top-emission display portion with a silicon backplane and a bottom-emission display portion with a TFT backplane.

According to Apple, a high resolution display may also be formed by separately forming a frontplane and a backplane. The frontplane may include OLED pixels on a substrate. The backplane may include a silicon substrate with circuitry for controlling the OLED pixels. Conductive attachment structures such as indium bumps may be used to mechanically and electrically connect the backplane to the frontplane.

For techies wanting to drill down into the details of this invention, review Apple's patent application 20240310635.  

Another HMD related patent was published on Thursday titled "Methods And Systems For Changing A Display Based On User Input And Gaze," that you could review here.