Apple has been granted a patent (number 11,164,917) that indicates future devices will have illuminated display borders.
About the patent
In the patent Apple says that displays on electronic devices generally contain opaque borders. Signal routing lines, encapsulation structures, display driver circuits, and other portions of a display that don’t emit light are formed along these opaque borders.
Apple says that if care isn’t taken, the opaque borders in a display may be overly large. This can create undesired bulk in an electronic device and can detract from the visual appearance of the electronic device. Apple wants to deal with such undesirable features on Macs, iPhones, and iPads.
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “An electronic device may have a display mounted in a housing. The display may be mounted on a front side of the device and the housing may have a housing wall on the rear side of the device. The display may be formed from an array of pixels configured to display an image for a user.
“Pixel-free border areas that run along the edges of the array of pixels may be provided with an edge illuminator. The edge illuminator may provide illumination to the border areas during operation of the device. The edge illuminator may have crystalline semiconductor light-emitting diode dies, backlit liquid crystal devices or electrophoretic display components, or may have a light guide that is supplied with illumination from a light-emitting diode.”
