Apple to make bending a feature

bendAfter it released its iPhone 6 which bent in your pocket, the more cynical amongst us thought that Apple might try to make this a “feature”.

Sure enough Apple has won a patent for flexible display tech that allows for layering of components like microphones or speakers

Flexible displays, in and of themselves, are nothing new. What makes this patent different is that it includes support for components — like buttons, microphones, or speakers — that can be mounted around the display and work through it.

So in other words when the phone bends everything else bends with it – exactly the effect when you put a bad structurally designed phone in your skinny jeans and the whole thing bends.

What appears to have happened is that Apple did not just make its bending on its iPhones a feature, it actually took out a patent on it.

According to Patently Apple this flexible display is capable of being bent and acting as a pass-through device that can handle a wide range of functionalities.

Apple envisions people bending or in some way manipulating the screen to touch a button activator below its surface.

By deforming that specific portion of the display, the activity associated with the button would be created. In another example, the flexibility of the display would create a porous layer that would allow for sound waves to pass through. Therefore, speakers and microphones and other components could sit under a screen and work as they do now.

Actually, it does appear that using this technology Apple could build a phone which is all-screen or nearly all-screen in design which will mean the death of the home button.