Apple looks for patent for a novel Smart Bezel secondary display for iPhone

Apple is seeking a patent for an innovative Smart Bezel secondary display technology evidently for its flagship smartphone iPhone, according to Patently Apple, a blog that examines Apple’s new patent applications. The new method will bring in an exterior secondary display with 12 segments on Apple’s future iPhones, and maybe on other iDevices also. These virtual segments can be used to operate multiple functions on the device without the need to touch on the traditional touchscreens.

smart bezel display

Apple’s new Smart Bezel technology for the iPhone will simply realize a set of virtual buttons around the touchscreen of the device as shown in the image with this article. That means there will be more buttons on an iPhone without keeping up more physical buttons, however. These virtual buttons will help users, who deal with hard to use controls on the main touchscreen while playing games. Controls of several games can certainly be switched to these virtual keys. As well, control buttons of built-in cameras and other often-used applications can also be moved to the new exterior virtual keys.

It looks like that the Smart Bezel exterior display will not appear on next iPhone or the one after that. Apple seems to be planning to launch the facility on an iPhone sometime in the future. Of course, it is not necessary that Apple will launch the new technology on any of its devices. The company may have applied for patent possibly to keep the technology away from its potential competitors. Apple routinely applies for new patents, but most of such patents are yet to come on Apple products.

Source: Mashable