Foldable iPad: Will Apple's first foldable be more of a tablet-like device?

(Pocket-lint) - With Samsung making various foldable devices successful antithetic signifier factors, and Google reportedly processing a foldable telephone of its own, Apple is, of course, besides softly toying with the idea. Evidence of this comes successful the signifier of a recently granted Apple patent.

The US Patent and Trademark Office precocious granted the Cupertino-based institution a patent that relates to a foldable tablet-looking device. The granted patent covers aggregate physics devices and displays being utilized unneurotic successful a system. Figures successful the patent amusement a brace of physics devices supported by a bendable lawsuit with an interior hinge structure, arsenic good arsenic a brace of physics devices successful a lawsuit that has been folded backmost connected itself.

The patent imagines a mode called the associated operating mode, wherever 1 representation tin seamlessly beryllium divided into 2 displays oregon it tin beryllium presented arsenic 1 ample image. As Patently Apple noted, the conception sounds rather akin to Microsoft's Surface Neo, a instrumentality that immoderate besides considered a foldable tablet.

You tin spot much images of the patent astatine Patently Apple.

Keep successful caput Apple has been rumoured successful the past to beryllium moving connected a foldable iPhone. One study even claimed it'd motorboat successful 2023 with an 8-inch display.

For a look astatine the champion upcoming foldable phones, spot Pocket-lint's usher here. We besides person a round-up of the champion existing foldables here.

Writing by Maggie Tillman. Originally published connected 18 November 2021.