Future iPhones, iPads, and Macs could have expandable displays as hinted by a new patent filing for “Electronic Devices Having Sliding Expandable Displays.” And Apple is already reportedly at work on a foldable iPhone and foldable iPad, so the technology mentioned could involve those products.
About the patent filing
The patent filing mainly talks about smartphones. However, there’s no reason why the technology couldn’t also apply to tablets and laptops. In the patent, Apple says that, if care isn’t taken, a display may not offer sufficient screen real estate to display information of interest to a user. At the same time, it can be difficult to enlarge the size of electronic devices too much to accommodate larger displays, because this can make devices too bulky. Apple thinks an expandable display could be the answer.
Summary of the patent filing
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing: “An electronic device may have a housing with portions that slide relative to each other. A display may be supported on a surface of the housing such as on a front face of the housing. The housing portions may slide between an unexpanded state in which the display has an unexpanded viewable area on the front face and an expanded state in which the display has an expanded viewable area on the front face that is greater than the unexpanded viewable area.
“The housing portions may have interior regions that contain electrical components. The display may be formed from a flexible display substrate. A portion of a flexible display may be stored in an interior region of the housing when the housing is in the unexpanded state. In the unexpanded state, the flexible display may have one or more bends and may double back on itself one or more times.”
The iPhone with slide-out display mock-up is courtesy of Concept Phones.
