We’ve all seen how in sci-fi movies, their phones and tablets are usually made entirely from glass, or at least what looks like glass. It’s a pretty cool design and effect, although this is something that has yet to happen to most smartphone/tablets in the real world. However it seems that this is a design aspect that Apple could be thinking about as they have recently patented a method that would allow them to build iOS devices, monitors, and even TVs made entirely from glass.
The method describes fusing different pieces of glass together, as opposed to crafting the device entirely from a block of glass, which could lead to it being very heavy. The patent describes how the edges of planar and peripheral glass pieces can be fused together to create a thick enough component, which in turn would be machined down to the desired shape.
It also talks about fusing pieces of glass within the housing to create internal structures such as fused-on ribs and reinforcement points over potentially weak spots. Ultimately such a design could house the circuitry that would allow the device to operate. Now without doubt such a design would be extremely eye-catching and would be a nice deviation from today’s builds which focuses on using metals.
However we can only imagine that there are aspects of glass that might not make it ideal for smartphones, such as its durability, but since this is only a patent, we guess it’s hard to tell if Apple has actual plans for such a device, or if they were simply toying with the idea. One of the people credited as the patent’s inventors is none other than Apple’s SVP of Design, Jony Ive.
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