Rumor: Apple is experimenting with inward curved OLED screen for iPhone
Apple is working on an iPhone with a screen that is curved inward, from top to bottom. That says financial news agency Bloomberg citing sources. The screen is said to be still in an early stage of development.
In addition to a curved screen, the experimental iPhone could be operated without touching the screen, writes Mark Gurman in his article on Bloomberg. Gurman regularly releases information about Apple products that have not yet been announced. These are features that are in development and Gurman writes that Apple has not yet decided to build them in.
The technique for operating the device without touching the screen would not work with motion sensors, but with technology that is in the screen. As a result, users have to keep their fingers close to the screen. According to Gurman’s sources, the technology will be ready for use in iPhones at the earliest in two years at the earliest.
Bloomberg does not explain how the technology works, but you can do that with two capacitive layers, for example. By integrating self capacitance and mutual capacitance on the same screen, devices can register normal touches and finger movements up to two centimeters above the screen. Mutual capacitance is the way iPhone screens normally work, where any point on a grid can detect a finger, allowing for multiple finger detection at the same time. With self capacitance not every point on a grid, but only every horizontal and vertical line is a sensor. This technique does not work with several fingers at the same time, but because the detection points are further apart, those sensors can work with a higher electrical voltage and therefore detect fingers at a greater distance.
Schematic representation of both types of touchscreen ‘capacitance’. On the left every line is a sensor, on the right every point in the grid
Smartphones with gesture control without touching the screen are not new. Sony implemented something similar in its Xperia Sola from 2012 and Microsoft was developing a Lumia device with a Kinect-like control, which worked on the basis of sensors in the screen. However, that device never came out.
If Apple makes an iPhone with a curved screen, it will not be the first smartphone with such a display. LG made the G Flex phones a few years ago, which have an OLED screen with a curvature to the inside. Those devices were not a great success.
Gurman also mentions in his article that Apple will release more smartphones with OLED screens in the short term. According to his sources, a second iPhone with an OLED screen will be released later this year and it would be a 6.5 “model. For this, Apple would also use LG Display screens in addition to OLED panels from Samsung. At the beginning of this year, a South Korean newspaper with the same information.
LG Flex 2 from 2015