14 DAY TRIAL // In one of our earlier pieces, we raised the question of whether the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge this year will prompt other key players in the industry to take up building handsets with curved displays on the side.
The dual curved edges on the new Samsung phone allow for additional information to be showcased, including notifications for calls and texts.
In addition, the Korean tech giant included some nifty features like allowing you to swiftly access your top five contacts or being able to tell who’s trying to contact you based on individually assigned colors.
So far, we have seen BlackBerry and LG showcase mysterious devices that seem to be constructed along the same lines. The Canadian device maker, for instance, showed a slider phone of sorts during the MWC 2015 event that took place in Barcelona a few days ago.
As for LG, the Korean company put up for display what seemed like a dual-edged display phone at CES 2015 a few months back.
Apple to copy Samsung's model somewhat?
Well, new uncovered information seems to indicate that Apple itself might be looking to try its hand at building a handset with a dual-edged display.
A recent patent filed by the Cupertino tech giant details an iDevice with built-in sidewall displays. The sketches included in the filing reveal that the so-called mini flexible edge displays house so-called Repurposing Active Virtual Buttons (as seen at Patently Apple).
However, Apple’s approach to the whole thing is a little bit different. Instead of having the display curved along the sides of the phone like in the case of Samsung's product, Apple wants to integrate these displays into the sides of the phone per-se.
As visible in the sketches, Apple might allow users to have access to additional controls from the side-screens, not just view notifications on them. For example, as it is suggested, Apple could place camera controls on the sides, as an easier way to switch between photo and video or adjust the flash, and so on.
Like it’s the case with most patents, it’s pretty uncertain whether Apple actually wants to implement this technology in its future products or is just experimenting around. What do you think about an iPhone with a secondary display or two?
