The company has never given up on the idea of producing a folding device, and a new patent confirms it.
An Apple patent describes many different ways to make batteries flexible enough to be used with foldable displays on an iPhone or iPad or to save space inside regular devices.
The most obvious problem for a foldable phone or tablet is the screen. We have already seen that Apple is working on displays with hinges and at the same time, but now the company wants to develop more reliable new technologies so as not to make the same mistakes as Samsung with the Galaxy Fold.
“Batteries often take up a significant amount of space in a portable electronic device,” he explains. “As devices have become increasingly hungry for energy, more space needs to be dedicated to house batteries.”
Apple’s various proposals focus on working with both battery cells and the connections between them. ” One solution is to separate the flexible battery cells into discrete regions ,” he says.
“For example, the flexible battery cells can be rolled into cylinders and then spread over a flexible substrate,” he continues. “Depending on the interval between the cylinders and their diameter, the coil can be flexed by at least one axis.”
Much of the patent describes the different methods of mounting and / or stacking the battery cells, as well as specifications on how to alleviate the stresses that this causes on the battery material. Apple has already taken advantage of the idea of stackable batteries in the 2015 MacBook.
Primarily, this patent concerns the ” operation of a flexible battery integrated in a folding display “.
“The flexible battery can be deployed along all four sides of a flexible display,” he says. “For example, the BMU of the battery management unit and the main logic board could both be packaged inside a housing configured to retract with a retraction mechanism that causes a flexible display to be wrapped around a cylindrical element . “
This new patent is yet another confirmation that Apple is planning a foldable iPhone or iPad.
Would you buy a foldable Apple device?
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