The quest for the Holy “all-screen” Grail of phone design began with thinning out the top and bottom display bezels, then came the iPhone X’s Notch Almighty, but in 2018 phone makers strayed far away from the beaten path leaving us with real handsets you can touch and buy that are indeed “all-screen” at the front.
Face ID and Touch ID to merge and submerge
Embodiments of the systems, devices, methods, and apparatus described in the present disclosure are directed to under-display optical transmission, reception, and/or sensing. In accordance with described techniques, an optical transmitter, optical receiver, optical transceiver, or multiple optical transmitters, receivers and/or transceivers may be positioned behind a device’s display, and light may be transmitted or received through translucent apertures extending from a front surface to a back surface of a display stack of the device. In this manner, an optical transmitter, receiver, or sensor may transmit or receive “through” a display. The optical transmitter, receiver, or sensor may opportunistically transmit or receive light through available translucent apertures in the display stack, or the display stack may be configured to provide translucent apertures in a deterministic pattern. When an optical transmitter, receiver, or sensor is positioned under a device’s display, a portion of the device’s display surface does not have to be reserved for the optical transmitter, receiver, or sensor, and in some cases the size of the device’s display may be increased.
Not only that but Apple also talks about “a method of sensing a proximity of an object to a device having a light-emitting display is described. The method may include receiving light through a translucent aperture in a display surface of the light-emitting display; collimating the received light; condensing the collimated received light toward an optical receiver; quantifying an output of the optical receiver; and correlating the quantified output of the optical receiver to the proximity of the object to the device. In some embodiments, the translucent aperture may be a first translucent aperture, and the method may also include emitting light from an optical transmitter; collimating the emitted light; and focusing the collimated emitted light toward a second translucent aperture in the display surface. In some embodiments, the emitted light may be focused and/or re-imaged to shape the light in a far-field.”
iPhone 15 may be the first modern iPhone without a notch
On the other hand, Apple has proven that being late with a technology doesn’t affect its iPhone sales at all, and its customers are usually happy to wait until Apple decides that a tech that many Androids have had for a while has matured and become cheap enough for it to employ on iPhones, too. Such was the case with OLED screens and 5G connectivity, so Apple securing a patent for under-display everything doesn’t mean that it will be in a hurry to use it. What do you think?
