Folding mobiles have been around for nearly two years, but as we all know, Apple likes to take things easy. The firm has launched its first 5G mobiles with great fanfare in 2020 a couple of years after the first Android models will hit the market compatible with these networks and now it seems that the firm has finally advanced its foldable iPhone.
We know it thanks to the leak of a new patent from the Cupertino. The firm has filed a new patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) called “Camera Systems for Flexible Electronic Devices.” This coincides in time with the news that Apple is already testing one of the two folding designs it is working on with its main manufacturer, Foxconn.
To our knowledge, the manufacturer has subjected two folding iPhone designs to different quality control tests. One of them would be horizontally deployable, like the Galaxy Z Fold and the first smartphone with a flexible screen launched on the market, while the second would be inspired by the Galas Z Flip and the Motorola Razr and would fold vertically, as shown. these images.
Peculiarities of folding iPhones
From leaked information about future flexible-screen iPhones we know that, unlike the Galaxy Z Fold 2, the idea is not to turn a smartphone into a tablet but to reduce the size of the phone in your pocket. That is, to be able to develop an iPhone with a larger screen, without reaching the dimensions of an iPad, but that can fit in the customers’ pocket.
What the patent advances is how the camera system for a foldable iPhone would work . In the application, Apple says: “An electronic device can have a flexible housing formed of flexible fabric, flexible polymer, or other flexible materials. Cameras can be mounted in this housing, which can be folded into different configurations, such as a configuration in which it has a convex surface that faces an outer region and a configuration in which the housing has a concave surface that faces the outer region. By reorienting the cameras by folding the housing, it is used to capture panoramic images or three-dimensional images. “
The patent also details that these different cameras would connect to the phone using wireless technology, suggesting that they could be in a case worn by the phone and not placed directly on the phone.
We could see the first folding iPhone of the brand at the end of this year, although the health situation does not help.
Source>USPTO
