Apple Wins Patent for iPhone with All-Glass Wraparound Display

Among the 46 new granted Apple patents the US Patent and Trademark Office published today, Patently Apple has discovered one that’s particularly interesting, essentially spilling gas on rumours of an iPhone with curved glass display: an Apple patent for an iPhone with a wraparound display.

Apple’s US patent 9,367,095 describes a device having a transparent housing and a flexible display that is capable of showing visual content on any portion of the transparent housing using virtual buttons instead of physical ones.

The company highlights the benefits of flexible displays: They are able to provide additional viewing area while retaining the original measurements of the device – or at least avoiding the need to increase the handset’s size. As an example, the patent notes that by using flexible displays, images or video can be presented in a “wrap-around manner”.

Apple originally filed for this patent in 2011 and credits Scott Myers as the sole inventor.