Back in 2014, Apple was awarded 57 patents and one of them was found to feature a flexible display. That particular patent has now received a bit of an upgrade, which was filed on February 14th and suggests that the company is still considering a foldable iPhone design, or, perhaps, even an iPad.
The design is not very different from what we’ve seen so far from other companies – the phone will simply be folding in half, but Apple also shows the different ways it could choose to incorporate the hinges that will allow the OLED display to do that.
In the patent, we’ve spotted a clamshell design as well as a tri-fold one – the screen is seen folding both inward and outward.
On February 20th, Samsung will most likely unveil its own folding Galaxy X phone, so the timing for this patent reveal is interesting, to say the least.
While Apple has not officially made any statements about any plans to manufacture a foldable phone any time in the near future, most of its competitors are currently either working on them or unveiling them so it’s probably only a matter of time until Apple will decide to follow up with a design of its own.
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