Apple has been revamping its iPhone and iPad lineup of products with new additions and innovations over time. Each year, the company releases at least one of each of these products in addition to revisions such as the iPad Mini and iPod Touch.
However, some Apple fans may be interested to know what Apple has in store for its user base sometime further down the line. A good way to finding this info out is looking at Apple patents.
On May 27, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Apple a patent that describes a process of iPhone's display glass being tied to sapphire and joined with a bezel made out of Liquidmetal, which is both a trademarked alloy and a company that Apple is apparently working with that focuses on amorphous metal alloys.
Apple's next iPhone revision should hit retail in the coming months. The latest rumors even suggest it can come as early as August or September. However, what the iPhone 6 will come packed with still remains a mystery, as Apple is a very secretive company. Despite these rumors, we probably shouldn't expect this technology to be included in the next revision. Technology is stages of progression and these patents should make their way into an iPhone sometime down the line in a couple years time or so.
However, despite this, latest details from Apple-patent specialty website, Patently Apple, suggest that Apple began working with LiquidMetal in 2008. This would give it a five-year span in which Apple has perfected the technology. This may mean that we may be closer than we realize to an iPhone with LiquidMetal technology present. In fact, some form of LiquidMetal technology may be already present in current iPhones without anyone but Apple realizing it.
The most recent details considering Apple's work with LiquidMetal show that Apple has been granted a total of 59 new patents related to the tech. The sapphire patent is just one of these patents mentioned. What is most interesting, and suggests that Apple may be very close to utilizing the tech in consumer products, and possibly one of the next couple of iPhone revisions, is that earlier in the month Apple renewed exclusive rights to use LiquidMetal in consumer products up until 2015.
"Liquidmetal alloys belong to a class of highly engineered materials called Bulk Metallic Glasses (BMG), which have been developed with the goal of advancing physical material properties to their theoretical limits, Liquidmetal," says the company behind the technology. "The names BMG and Liquidmetal alloy accurately represent these remarkable materials, which have astounded material scientists for years and exhibit certain properties which continue to defy traditional understandings of materials."
The description above pretty much reiterates the mysterious and still puzzling nature of what the alloys look like or how the actual technology works. From various reports, it seems that the movie "Terminator 2" wasn't that far off the mark when representing it in cinematic fashion (although the current product lineup suggests it is a solid mass and not a liquid material just yet).
What truly defines tech and makes it stand out among other metals is that LiquidMetal alloys possess an amorphous atomic structure. It basically will allow Apple to create a stronger exterior compared with plastic, but with more flexibility than traditional metal.
