New Apple Patent Describes Fashioning Flexible OLED Displays With 'Fastened Bent Edges'
A method for fashioning electronic devices with flexible displays using organic light-emitting diodes and “having fastened bent edges” is described in a new patent assigned to Apple. Patent 9,256,250 was one of 21 assigned to Apple and published Tuesday in…
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the Patent and Trademark Office's Official Gazette. Devices such as smartphones “are often provided with rigid displays made from rigid display structures,” said the patent, which lists three inventors and was applied for in April 2014. But such rigid structures “often include a significant amount of inactive border area around the display for accommodating display circuitry for operating display pixels in an active region of the display,” the patent said. “It is not uncommon for the width of the inactive border to be up to a centimeter wide or more,” making those displays “bulky” and requiring the use of “electronic device housings with wide bezels,” it said. The patent described an alternative method of wrapping the bent edges to “conform to the shape of an internal support structure.” Typical of most patents, the invention doesn’t delve into how the method might be incorporated into commercial devices, such as Apple’s next-generation iPhone. Apple representatives didn’t comment Wednesday.