Apple could soon join the trend of folding screens and launch its Apple iPhone fold or Apple iPad fold that would compete with Samsung and Huawei. The tech-giant company won a patent for a folding screen, which was granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office last Tuesday.
At the beginning of the year we saw how Samsung announced the Galaxy Fold and Huawei the Mate X, mobile phones that boasted flexible screens, and although both had seemed to fail in the area as both postpone and stop the production of due to reports of breaking easily, Apple is moving forward by winning a patent for foldable screens.
The application was submitted by Apple in January 2018 and is within a series of requests made around the flexible screens. This patent describes an electronic device with a screen and a cover that are flexible. However, the documentation does not specify which Apple product would it be incorporated, so we could see a foldable iPhone or a foldable iPad.
The new patent, discovered by the site Patently Apple, shows a gadget that would have an outside display for when it was closed and another foldable and larger when opened. What makes the patent images exciting is that, is not exactly as we have seen in the case of folding phones of Huawei and Samsung, since it would have different ways to fold it and can also be folded in three parts which may indicate that the technology is used on an iPad, because of the size of the screen.
Between figures 1A and 1B one can see the usual folding mechanism that we have already seen in the previous models that have been presented in the market, a flexible zone in the middle would make it possible to bend the terminal in half. The main attraction is seen in Figure 4A, which distinguishes two different areas of folding, the main are that would make the usual gesture of central folding, and another secondary area which would be above the previous, wrapping the terminal itself.
We do not know how Apple would solve this double fold, taking into account the problems that Samsung has had with its postponed Samsung Galaxy Fold. But Apple fans are hopeful that this can be a reality.
Even so, it is worth noting that not all registered patents end up as commercial products, so the idea may end up being dropped and never used by Apple. It is most likely though that Apple would be waiting for the evolution of this technology to mature before risking entering this market, which would help prevent the same difficulties as seen with Samsung.
Apple knows that folding and 5G phone represents the next generation of smartphones, so a foldable iPhone or iPad can be seen soon.
