patents

Apple's prospective plans for a "modular system for head-mounted device" were revealed in a newly-public patent posted to the USPTO. The United States Patent and Trademark Office showed this document with inventors Paul X Wang and Dinesh C Mathew, as first filed in April of the year 2019. This could, possibly, point to part of Apple's design language for their eventual release of a pair of smart glasses, imbued with augmented reality abilities and tipped to be called Apple Glass.

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Social or physical distancing, while not an assurance, is one of the simplest ways to keep the COVID-19 coronavirus from spreading. It isn't, however, one of the easiest as people have realized after months or even just weeks of being deprived of close social interactions. That's one of the reasons why video chat platforms are on the rise but that doesn't solve one important social activity, taking group selfies. Fortunately, Apple apparently has an idea on how to solve that though it remains to be seen if it actually has any plans to.

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Of the three major gaming platform makers, Nintendo has long been considered the most traditional, most reserved, and, sometimes, also most archaic. It was slow to jump on the latest gaming trends, especially mobile, and even then it would distance itself from things likes loot boxes and mobile gaming addiction. Those business practices have given it a more wholesome and family-friendly image and its latest patent reveals just how much it values quality of life practices, especially if it could be tied to a game and new products to sell.

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The urge to banish all bezels around the screen has resulted in a few casualties while manufacturers try to figure out how to best put back what they have kicked out. We're still waiting for the day that under-display cameras finally become a thing but, until then, we'll have to settle for notches and cutouts. The latter, unfortunately, has led to even less hardware, like LED indicators. Samsung may have a solution for the latter and it's something that third-party apps have already tried implementing quite a while back.

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Smartphones have become so powerful these days that you can use it for almost everything. You can even use a desktop on it, either through remote access or some Linux-based magic. Smartphones, however, will always be limited not just by the hardware they have inside but also their size. You can, of course, always attach a peripheral like a keyboard but one of OPPO's latest patents means you won't have to carry around a separate one with you. Presuming, of course, you're willing to bulk up your phone with a case.

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DxOMark's verdict on the Galaxy Z Flip phone is out and its message is pretty clear. It's good enough but not what you'd expect from a $1,400 phone. Of course, Samsung never really splurged on the foldable phone's cameras and left it rather ill-equipped to compete with other high-end flagships. The next Galaxy Z Flip might rise up to the challenged by adding another camera and a Samsung patent may reveal how it plans to solve its problem of fitting all of those on a small phone.

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Toyota has designed a special vehicle specifically for COVID-19 patients, with the tailor-made transportation taking into account the highly-contagious nature of coronavirus. The special ambulance was developed for Showa University Hospital in Japan, based on requests from medical facilities in the country, and includes a number of unusual features.

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Back when the giants Samsung and Huawei were competing over foldable phones, there were two schools of design that became prevalent last year. It was the Galaxy Fold's "innie" versus the Mate X's "outie". Neither has been completely impervious to accidents but the Huawei Mate X may have been taking too many risks. That may be just one of two reasons why Huawei's next foldable phone might be an innie but it may also have something to do with its cameras.

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Today clues on the features included with the next big foldable smartphone from Huawei suggest that Samsung's got some real competition for the Galaxy Fold 5G. The next-generation foldable smartphone called Huawei Mate X2 appeared in renderings via a design patent from EUPO show a pair of displays, one the size of a normal phone, the other the size of a medium tablet, with 6 cameras and a stylus!

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Patent lawsuits are a matter of life for any tech company and the bigger you are, the bigger the target painted on your back. Many of these lawsuits go unnoticed, especially when filed against giant companies that can make them disappear. Apple, however, wasn't able to win one against the California Institute of Technology and now has to pay the university what is perhaps its biggest patent-related damages sum in its history.

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Nintendo has an odd thing with touch screens on its gaming consoles. A few of them have one but not all of them take full advantage of the technology. The Nintendo 3DS utilized its screen and stylus to moderate success but the Nintendo Switch, which is practically a custom Android tablet, doesn't yet. It seems, however, that Nintendo has something in mind that could change that, not by making and selling a special kind of stylus but turning one of the Joy-Cons into a rather big pointing tool.

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Even if it isn't due until the end of 2020, Microsoft uncharacteristically revealed its dual-screen devices as early as October last year. Its purpose was to give developers ample time to prepare for that future and modify their apps or create new ones for the Surface Neo (and the Android-based Surface Duo). Adopting new designs and APIs is one thing but actually testing how it works on a dual-screen device is a different thing. Since developers are unlikely to have access to a Surface Neo or even a prototype, Microsoft's new patent may provide a solution everyone might be able to use.

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