Apple Patents A Delicate-LookingAll-Glass iPhone Design

Apple designs phones thatother OEMs copy and this has been going onfor a while. There are quite a lot of phones inthe marketthatimitate the designof the iPhone6. This will always happen as longas Apple keeps designing great devices worthy of emulation.

A new patentfiled by Apple suggests an all-glass phone thatcan best be described as wild. Well, Apple has several patents and quitea lot of companies do this justto protect theirideas.
The patentwas filed in April last year but was justpublished. Itshows a device with a wrap-around display which is described as a “portable electronicdevice with a wraparound display.” The patentreads:
“ For example, a flexible display can be folded in such a way as to form acontinuous loop suchthat images (still orvideo) can be presented in a wrap-around manner in which the images appear to be presented in a continuousloop. The flexible display can be folded into a tightly wound configuration and placed within an enclosure at least a portion of which is transparent. In some cases, the enclosure can be formed of glass at least a portion of which is made opaque (at least translucent) by the addition of ink orother masking material. In other cases, however, the entire enclosure can be fully transparent in which case the folded flexible display can unwind when placed within the glass enclosure. Once fully unwound, the flexible display can present images at any portion of theglass enclosure.
The design is illustratedas shown below:

Image credit. USPTO.gov
This concept has been around for a while, it was actually firstfiled in 2011 and grantedlast year. This newly grantedpatentdetails the concept evenmore with added features notseen inthe original filing. The patentdescribes what Apple explains as removable end caps, this is similar to LG G5 modules:
‘ This configuration would allow the end caps to be easily removed for maintenance purposes. In another embodiment the removable end cap could also allow users to add end caps with additional functionality. For example, an end cap could be installed that would allow two devices to be connected together and act as onesystem. This could be as simple as having an end cap with a male data connector designed to attach to data connector 218 of another similar portable electronic device 200. In yet another embodiment an alternate end cap could have an improved camera or a different set of wireless antennae.
If Apple decides to goahead with this design, a future iPhonecouldlook justlike this:

As mentioned before, this is only a patentand Apple may never createa phone thatlooks likesthis.Buthey, this design looks very delicate, but wild.