Apple reveals that one of their Foldable iPhones is likely to provide an Outer-Display beyond its main Internal Foldable Display
One of Patently Apple's specialties is to find patent trends. We began covering folding devices going back at least a decade to January 2014, well before any other Apple site began their coverage. Technically, we covered foldable devices relating to Samsung going all the way back to June 2012.
Yesterday the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a patent application from Apple that primarily relates to foldable smartphones – though the patent also lists tablets (iPads), a laptop (MacBook) and more. Some of Apple's foldable display patents continuously update covering potential new features that they want to legally protect. Apple is legally able to add a new feature in 2024 that will be legally protected on the original patent going back a year or a decade or more.
Apple updated their patent titled "Electronic Devices With Display And Touch Sensor Structures" that goes all the way back to 2015. Now, not all updates are overtly meaningful. In fact most times, updates are legally-minded updates to strengthen the coverage of the invention. Yet other times they may reveal something noteworthy.
Modern foldable devices, like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold below, offers customers a regular sized outer display so that users could make a phone call, read emails and so forth quickly. These foldable smartphones can unfold and provide a much wider internal display that is great for videos, watching sports, illustrating large graphics (like patent graphics), enjoy online games and so forth.
One of the big additions / updates to their 2015 patent is adding an outer display in addition to the internal larger panel for single, double and triple folds (almost a decade before Huawei's new tri-fold) as Apple's patent figures are presented below. This is the first time that this particular patent mentioned an "Outer Display."
Apple's first new patent claim states: An electronic device, comprising: a foldable housing with first and second portions that fold relative to one another along a fold axis, wherein the foldable housing has an inner surface and an outer surface; a first display on the inner surface of the foldable housing and spanning at least partially across the first and second portions; a second display on the outer surface of the foldable housing; and touch sensor structures configured to gather touch input on the first display and the second display.
New Patent Claim #3: The electronic device defined in claim 2, wherein the second display is visible when the foldable housing is in the unfolded and folded configurations.
New Patent Claim #10: Wherein the touch sensor structures comprise first and second planar portions and a bent portion between the first and second planar portions, wherein the first planar portion gathers touch input on the first wall, wherein the second planar portion gathers touch input on the second wall, and wherein the bent portion gathers touch input on the portion of the metal sidewalls.
Apple's latest foldable device patent finally allows us to imagine that one of Apple's foldable devices could be a smartphone that will follow the trend of offering an outer-display beyond the internal foldable display. While we may have assumed of such a design/development, we now know it's legally on record and protected.
To review the full details of this invention, including more patent figures and their 20 new patent claims, check out patent application 20240310942.