Apple files patent for iPhone with wraparound display
Apple, whose iPhone has been criticized for having a display that's relatively small when compared with smartphones such as the Samsung S4 and HTC One, has filed a patent application that proposes a novel solution: a display that wraps around the entire handset.
Well, not "wraps around," per se, but rather "wraps within." Patent application 20130076612, published Thursday morning in the US Patent and Trademark Office's weekly filing-fest, describes a device in which a flexible AMOLED display is inserted into a hollow glass housing, and is pressed against the inside of that housing by "structural support elements."
The reasoning behind this all-display, all-the-time "embodiment" – to use the appropriate patentese – is to increase the amount of available display area to include the front, back, and sides of the handset. Other embodiments allow for some of the hollow housing to be made opaque or translucent, thus lessening the amount of display surface.
