Apple may be preparing flip version of iPhone
By Jonathan Schlaffer
You may ask, what could be better than the iPhone? Perhaps a flip version of the iPhone and an Apple patent indicates it may be doing just that.
It comes down to making the device smaller while retaining all the functionality. Apple seems to think a flip version of the iPhone may do that and then some. The proposed design appears to have a dedicated key pad for dialing numbers.
The idea behind that is to separate the screen from the touch sensor while it’s operating in the flip mode. The key pad would be designed to be touch sensitive on both sides.
Unwired review has a list of things this opens the device up to,
“If you want to dial a number, you can just draw it on a trackpad.
Or the rotational dial may appear on display, and you rotate it by sliding finger on a track pad.
In the open mode, the transparent trackpad can easily be made to display the standard T9 keypad and other symbols. That can be accomplished by making polarized number and symbol markings that can only be seen when the trackpad is open. Or they can be implemented as tiny LED’s.
When needed, you can keep both sides of the cover/trackpad touch-active at the same time. Thus having “six degrees of freedom” for control, and enabling 3D gestures on the device. Standard multi-touch gestures along “XY” axis on one side of trackpad, adding “Z” axis for the touch events on the other.”
The technology could be expanded to other iPods and could result in iPod/iPhone Touch Nano devices.
It may well come down to just making the iPhone smaller but I think it’s the perfect size as it is. I’ve never been at the point where I’ve said “wow, it’s so heavy and bulky I just can’t find any pockets for it.” Something is wrong with you if you don’t have space on your person for an iPhone the way it is.
Not that smaller is a bad thing but that’s sad if it’s the only reason.
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