iWatch or Future iPhone: Apple Files Patent for Wrap-Around Display
GSM Dome

Apple practically revolutionalized industry in 2007 with a touch-focused and app-centric, rectangular phone, and since then maintained the form factor of the iPhone. Just as Samsung and others are now flooding the market with identical form factors, Apple is looking ahead. Apple has recently submitted to the USPTO a patent for a phone with a flexible wraparound-style AMOLED display. Apple's patent application, "Electronic device with wrap-around display", refers to a flexible grass component that is raped around the shape of the device, offering controls on the front as well as the back. The devices described in a patent app are clearly in the very early stages of development, so don't expect your iPhone 6 or 7 to look like this.

What Else You Need To Know

  • The comprehensive patent application mentions built-in facial recognition, a user-sensing technology that determines which siste is within the user's field of vision, and a method of layering flexible, glass displays on top of one another in order to produce different visual effects, including the appearance of 3D.
  • Previous reports have claimed that Apple's readying an iOS-based "iWatch" before the end of 2013, with the iPhone accessory able to make calls, check caller ID, relay map coordinates, and display notifications from the user's phone on the watch's display.

Other sources

Like Voltron, when combined these iPhones or iOS mobile devices would become greater than the sum of their parts. - Darrell Etherington, Mobile Crunch  
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