Apple Patent Reveals Flip-Phone iPhone

iPhone is sleek, but the candybar form factor doesn’t appeal everyone. Apple needs a variety of form factors before they can dream of taking over the phone industry. Recent "dual sided trackpad" patent filed by Apple talks about one such possibility – flip phone or cam shell.

iphone camshell patent

The patent illustrates a design, which separates the display and the capacitive touch sensor array into two units. The touch sensor array is actually a translucent (or perhaps transparent) panel, which is touch-sensitive on both sides. The two units are connected with a hinge. When you close the device, the transparent touch panel is covering the display unit, and can be used as an ordinary iPhone. Unwired View has some Photoshop mockups of the patent:

Photoshop Mockup of iPhone Camshell

PS: Yeah, even I am drooling over the sexiness of the design.

This post was published by on March 19, 2008

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://www.exposedseo.com Dr SEO

    Ah no way! This is going to be sweet! I love flip phones better anyway because you don’t scratch the important bits as often.

  • http://green-flamingo.com Nathaniel

    That is a sleek design! Apple can always think of something.

  • http://www.gadgets4nowt.co.uk Steve Elliott

    Apple are the Daddies when it comes to design. Nothing else touches them at the minute.

    Would like to try out the iPhone but O2 contracts are just so expensive (in my humble opinion!)

  • http://prosperitywriter.com/ Prosperity Writer

    i’m staring at my nokia n70, hell i want that iPhone too!

  • http://www.vat19.com Stefanie

    Very cool. I have had no interest in iPhones thus far, but this would definitely make me think twice about that decision. Looking at it, I figured the clear part would be useless, or some kind of plastic cover…but then I saw they had numbers on it, so apparently not.

  • http://freeipodsetc.co.uk Mike Touch

    Simply stunning though it’s pretty hard to see how well it’ll work from those pictures.

    I guess only time will tell.

  • http://www.gottapimp.com cool stuff

    You’ve gotta love publicly viewable documents. I might actually get an i-phone if they follow through with this idea — looks cool as all hell.

  • common sense guy

    this is quite idiotic!!!!! who is going to want an additional touch piece on an already touch phone!!!! This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. So a way for Apple to sell more phones is to make their phone bigger? Wow how funny is that?