The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted Samsung a patent for a folding smartphone, as well as a transparent display for phones. Illustrations show the phone folding horizontally across the display, resulting in a landscape arrangement for certain usage scenarios. The company also patented a different design that features a phone folding in two different places.
Samsung has patented a smartphone design that features a "notch" similar to the one popularized by the iPhone X. The controversial design element has appeared in a growing number of smartphones, and the patent hints that a Samsung model may one day be featured among them. The patent was filed with China's SIPO patent office late last month.
Encryption technology research firm PACid Technologies has filed a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics for allegedly infringing upon its biometric patents. The complaint was filed in the Texas Eastern District Court on April 6. In it, PACid claims Samsung has violated three of its patent, two of them filed in the United States and the third in South Korea. All three relate to data encryption.
Essential Phone PH-2 might well be the most excellent offbeat smartphone ever made. But only if Essential sticks to their guns. Only if Essential does not give into the trends that are ruling the smartphone community right now. And only if Essential keeps their display like it should be - super flat. What we're looking at today is a concept rendering of what the next Essential Phone might look like, ideally.
Less than a month after going after Facebook over alleged copyright infringement, BlackBerry is back with another lawsuit, this time taking Snap to task. As with last month's lawsuit, BlackBerry has accused Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, of infringing upon some of its messaging patents, in this case half a dozen that were issued from 2012 to 2014. Two of those six patents are part of BlackBerry's legal action against Facebook.
Samsung has patented technology for true wireless charging -- that is, charging that doesn't even require the phone to touch the charging pad. Such technology has been dreamed about for decades, once being a common element in science fiction, soon hopefully to be a reality. Per the patent, Samsung's system would make it possible to wirelessly charge a mobile device from nearly anywhere in a room, even while the owner uses it.
Patents are everywhere, and of course not just in the US, but there are particular industries where they show up more often than not. In our not so small corner of the world, we see dozens of patents on interesting technologies and potential products. Emphasis on “potential” because most of the time, they never come to be. Sometimes not from the party that filed the patent. More often than not, patents only surface when media get whiff of them or when used in a lawsuit. Because while patents were initially conceived to foster innovation, they run the risk of suffocating that very same thing instead.
Google has a notebook device design that's different from any produced design already in production. This piece of work was first submitted by Google to the United States PTO in August of 2016, and was just revealed to the public this February. This three-part computing device has one keyboard portion, one display portion, and one base. At first glance, this piece of work looks a lot like a propeller.
A newly published Apple patent details a laptop that replaces the traditional keyboard and trackpad with a large secondary OLED display. The result, at least based on the patent's description and illustrations, is a MacBook that retains the typical hinged form factor, but that has two large displays instead of one. The second display could function as an OLED keyboard.
It's no secret that Facebook has access to a huge amount of data, and some of that data may be used for determining a user's socioeconomic status. According to a newly discovered patent, Facebook has developed a system (or perhaps just a system concept) that figures out whether users belong to one of three different socioeconomic groups, one being "middle class." This determination would be made based on info the user has provided, including things like homeownership.
A newly discovered Amazon patent filed back in 2016 details a wearable device designed to track warehouse employees. Is the company developing such a product for its own warehouses? Perhaps. According to the patent, which was filed with the USPTO, the wearable can be used to monitor a warehouse worker's performance based on their proximity to certain inventory bins.
A patent filed by LG shows a folding phone concept in which the handset forms a tablet when unfolded. According to the patent's details, this model -- should it ever be put into production -- wouldn't feature two separate displays like the ZTE Axon M, but rather a single flexible display that can be folded in half. The result is a smartphone that functions as a tablet.