Friday, April 8, 2011

Apple iPhone Patent: Electronic Paper for Reading Books

With the ever-increasing changes to the mobile phone technology, it is great when a new patent comes to our viewing attention, as it give us an insight in to what ideas are being brought to the design table, from the absolute brilliant to the downright ridiculous.

Well we have an Apple iPhone patent for your viewing pleasure, which relates to a smart hybrid display that can effectively switch between an Electronic-Paper display and the standard Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) dependant on what the user is viewing at the time.

Now usually a device will only have the one display, if the device is a reading device for e-books it will normally come with the electronic paper display, whereby, traditional devices will come with an LCD to optimise dynamic colour content or high-resolution. Therefore, to have one device that can switch between the two types of screen could be a great addition.

This patent comes to us from Patently Apple, by way of iPhone Download Blog who go on to indicate that each display will be able to stack on top of the other and have the ability to go invisible, thus enabling you to view the screen below it. With the screen required for the task, being selected by an electronic device and becoming, the more prominent screen.

So what do you think? Is this dual display something you would like to see on the market, let us know you views.

I do have a little concern about whether this is an Apple patent or Nokia’s, see our recent article here, on Nokia’s allegations that Apple infringed on their patents. Why not also check out our article on ‘Patent Finder’ an iOS app.