The foldable iPhone can be sensitive to touch all over the body

The touchscreen wasn't invented with the iPhone, but Apple made it common. Potentially as important as the multi-touch feature on the iPhone's front screen is Apple's plan to add touch sensitivity to every side and edge of the device.

A recently received patent, “Electronic Devices With Display And Touch Sensor Structures,” addresses the desire make it convenient to touch, swipe, or do other actions on the surface of the iPhone to control it. However, it also has some details on how this could be done even in future curved or curved iPhone models.

“Collecting sensory data from the user and effectively displaying the image to the user can be challenging,” Apple says. “For example, when a user provides touch input on a touchscreen display, their hand may obscure the images that appear on the display.”

“Buttons and other input devices may be used to collect input from the user, but this type of input device may not be as convenient and versatile as a touch sensor,” he continues. “Displays are sometimes not visible from certain angles and may be smaller than desired.”

It ends up not being that different from a regular iPhone design in how the technology described in the patent will be used. There are differences in the iPhone case in each case, but making them touch-sensitive follows the same process.

“Circuits, batteries, and other components” will be inside the case, and that case will have walls. “Walls can have opaque and transparent parts,” Apple says, which “can include opaque plastic, metal, composite materials with fibers and layers of other materials with fibers, ceramics, and other opaque materials…”

Apple distinguishes between the edges of the regular iPhone style and the curved edges of the complex device, and refers to what it calls “sidewalls.”

“The front wall and parts of the side walls can be formed from a layer of glass or other transparent element,” the patent continues. “A touch sensor layer and a display layer can be located under the front and side walls of the glass layer… [the touch sensor layer can also be located under the opposite back wall.”

Most of the patent is about details , such as how touch sensitivity “can have fine metal lines (such as nanostructures) that are so small as to be invisible to the eye.”

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Touch can replace solid-state buttons

Previously, there were rumors that the iPhone 15 Pro may not have physical buttons at all. Instead of volume or sleep/wake buttons, the iPhone is said to get touch or solid-state buttons.

This patent does support the idea — and can now be seen to be an early reference to what is now the camera control button on the iPhone 16 line.

“The touch input on the sidewalls [can also] be used as a control for the camera (e.g. a virtual shutter button),” the text continues, “can be used as input in other virtual button scenarios, can be used to implement a volume control or a control for control other device operations (such as screen brightness, color settings, contrast settings, etc.).”

However, more often discussed are designs where the buttons remain as they are now. “Holes can be formed in the walls [of the sensor edges],” it said, “for example, to accommodate a button.”

Touch Edge Use Cases

Besides the technology and how to achieve the goal, this time Apple gives some examples of what such touch control can be useful for.

“In gaming and other applications, it may be desirable to use a sensor on the rear surface…,” it suggests, “to collect touch input while displaying related visual information on a display on the opposite front surface [of the device].”

Apple's patent refers to applications that date back to 2013, but the company has also previously received related patents. For example, in 2016, a patent that mainly concerned the creation of a “wraparound” iPhone included a touch frame in the design.

And here's something else. Although this is a new patent, it looks exactly the same as the one previously obtained in 2023.

Perhaps the new version was only filed as a procedural requirement, especially given that no obvious changes in the text. But that old patent was filed in 2021, and the new version is filed in 2024.

You can over-interpret Apple's patents and filings, but the company seems to have been seriously pursuing this idea . Especially considering that the new Camera Control feature means that at least part of the patent is already implemented in the delivered product.