Apples Clamshell iPhone Patent
Found a really interesting article over on WiredView that I thought you guys would like to see. Apple has files a new patent for a clamshell/flip phone. Read below. I’ll be doing my own rendering of this.
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The drawings above, are Photoshop renderings, based on a device described in a recent Apple’s patent application, called “Dual sided trackpad“. It shows that Apple may indeed be working on a clamshell iPhone device. But with a twist. |
The main idea with this device is to separate capacitive touch sensor array and the phone display into two separate units. Then put the touch sensor array on a translucent (transparent) panel, make this panel touch sensitive on both sides - top and bottom and connect them with a hinge.
That’s it. You’ve got you flip iPhone.
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When device is closed, transparent touch sensitive panel is covering the whole display area and you’ve got your ordinary full multi-touchscreen iPhone. When you flip iPhone open, you have a normal phone display and another side of the trackpad becomes multi-touch-active. Through it you control the phone:
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If you want to dial a number, you can just draw it on a trackpad. Or the rotational dial may appear on display, and you rotate it by sliding finger on a track pad. In the open mode, the transparent trackpad can easily be made to display the standard T9 keypad and other symbols. That can be accomplished by making polarized number and symbol markings that can only be seen when the trackpad is open. Or they can be implemented as tiny LED’s.
When needed, you can keep both sides of the cover/trackpad touch-active at the same time. Thus having “six degrees of freedom” for control, and enabling 3D gestures on the device. Standard multi-touch gestures along “XY” axis on one side of trackpad, adding “Z” axis for the touch events on the other.
This dual sided trackpad approach can be applied to media player functionality as well. When media player mode is selected and cover is closed, it works just like iPod Touch does - media controls on the screen and you control it via touch/gestures.
Flip it open, and another side of the trackpad acts as a scroll wheel on a standard iPod and more.
So what’s the point of all these shenanigans?
Well, for one, you can make the overall device much smaller, when closed. It will be much more convenient to carry around and will fit well in your pocket. And it’s also about this clamshell form factor thing. I know quite a few people that won’t even consider any other form of device for a mobile phone. Also notice how all the pictures in here are pretty similar in shape to the latest generation of iPod Nano? Well, this might be yet another way Apple may take to create iPhone Nano device. And a stand alone iPod Nano may also benefit from such setup. Same size, with two times bigger display. iPod Touch Nano or iPod Nano Touch, anyone?
[via UnwiredView]
Categories and Tags Apple News, Rumors, iPhone
