Apple seeks patent for devices with roll-up displays – iRoll? An Apple patent application indicates that Cook and Company are possibly entertaining the idea of adding roll-up screens to everything from the all-in-one iMac to the iPhone – and even wearables. Apple is seeking a patent [PDF] for displays that could be rolled up, all while still being protected by a thin layer of glass. To …
Always good to see patents accompanied by the crisp diagrams from your CAD designs, created when you built the first test devices.
Ah, misty-eyed memories[1] of the days when patent applications were required to include a physical working copy (or a model, to avoid the office being cluttered with too many 20 yard high beam engines).
[1] hyperbole, ok? Not really that old! Adjusts silk topper, straightens cravat.
In this case I think it is a "Keep Out! We will sue you if you make a roll up Kree tablet as seen in Agents of Shield season 5."
That was 2017 but I am sure you can find prior art dating back to the great library of Alexandria or the house of wisdom in the city of peace.
The other option is to keep the patent application quiet, wait for others to start selling something infringing then get sales blocked until they pay up. Bonus points if you get the patent into a major standard before anyone notices.
"That was 2017 but I am sure you can find prior art dating back to the great library of Alexandria"
Not quite that far back (late 1990s), but IIRC one of the bits of background tech in "Earth: Final Conflict" was a pull-out roller screen on their handheld video whatsits.
You do recall correctly.
Although <changes to nasally voice> polite discussions(!) are had whether they rolled up or folded: when closed, the handles are almost as wide as the exposed screen. And they are rigid enough to be easily held in just one hand when opened. Even in a gunfight whilst you are crouched behind some boxes.
Nerdmobile - Away!
> a roll up Kree tablet as seen in Agents of Shield season 5
I see your 2017 telly and raise you the 2000 movie "Red Planet".
They even made it a plot point[1] that these things are (probably) so thin you can view them from either side and spot the view of the mountain range is from the other side!
[1] more realistic than the main plot point - and even that was miles ahead of the key reveal in the same year's "Mission to Mars"!
yes there were a number of companies working on roll up screens a decade ago if not more. I saw a few prototypes but as far as I know none ever made it to production. one likely problem is that bendy screens will tend to not lay perfectly flat after a while, then your very expensive phone would end up with a screen resembling a fun house mirror
@John Brown (no body) "AFAICT, they are only patenting a method of rolling a glass coated screen"
No they are not. There is no method, they are just describing rolling a glass coated screen around a spindle. They are simply describing rolling a flat surface that has multiple layers around a spindle and the various forces that will apply to those layers.
This description would apply to LG's TV screen that will certainly contain more than one layer.
BTW I have read the patent application linked in the article and I saw no method. But maybe I missed something if so please point out what that method is.
I may be mistaken but it seemed to me that the patent application was all about the mechanics of the rolling process.
There are words such as "locally thinned", "compressive stress", but to me the key component is the "reverse bend" concept. This might be a real insight into handling brittle materials.
TBH I know nothing about how other manufacturers have implemented their rolled screens so there may not be any real innovation in this, as seems to be the case in most patent applications.
Have you ever seen a sellotape dispenser, a spool of tape at one end, the tape snipes off at the other end. Where the tape meets the horizontal plane there is a reverse bend to the bend of the tape on the spool. As you pull tape through the diameter of the tape on the spool decreases as does the angle of the reverse bend.
The only difference in Apples patent is that they can control the angle of that bend by moving the spindle up and down the Y axis with springs. Moving the spindle along the Y axis to maintain angle of the feed to the X axis is as old as the hills and is commonly used to keep the stress constant.
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