If you are an iPhone enthusiast, you must have come across either videos or photos that show an all-glass iPhone from the future. And besides fans, Jony Ive, who was the chief of design for Apple products, has shown interest in an iPhone that is made of nothing but glass. Apple has now filed a patent with the US Patent and Trademark Office for an all-glass iPhone, confirming that such an idea may be in the pipeline. Not just that, Apple’s patent shows an Apple Watch and Mac Pro tower with glass encasings all around.
Spotted by Patently Apple, the patent filed by Apple shows a gadget that is covered with glass enclosures from six sides “defining an interior volume and comprising a first glass member and a second glass member.” The patent seems to have been written in a very technical language, but the crux of that could be a glass box with iPhone features.
“The first glass member defines at least a portion of a first major side of the six-sided glass enclosure, at least a portion of a peripheral side of the six-sided glass enclosure, a first region along the peripheral side and having a first thickness, and a second region along the peripheral side and having a second thickness different from the first thickness,” read Apple’s patent, according to Patently Apple.
The electronic device, which could be the iPhone, may come with a force-sensing system, which could be a way to find out any “deformation” in glass regions. All six sides will be transparent and the device may either use a single slab of glass or multiple glass slabs attached together to form a working unit. Since each surface may have a different physical distinction, an enclosure may be used “to erase or blend” the distinctions between various surfaces. In simple terms, either the front or the back could extend to the next or opposite side to give a larger functional area to users.
Case in point, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, which had a distinctive display edge. It allowed users to interact with a handful of apps and perform selective tasks using that area only. Apple’s implementation, as described in the patent, may bring a rather futuristic device that will have transparent surfaces all around. This will also mean that a rather sophisticated palm-rejection technology will be required to prevent accidental touches because of touch-sensitive glass all around.
Just like an all-glass iPhone, Apple may also have an idea for an all-glass Apple Watch and Mac Pro tower, as shown in the diagrams in the patent. However, their working mechanism and the labels of parts are not available yet. Anyway, a patent does not necessarily mean there will be an all-glass iPhone or an Apple Watch or a Mac Pro tower, for that matter.
