Patent filings are an interesting topic. There are plenty of patent filings that we hope to see come to life, and then there are those that are probably better left alone. That said, the latter is the case with this recently discovered filing from LG. This particular filing dates back to August of 2010, however it has recently come back in the form of an issued patent.
Issued or not, we are not expecting LG to release anything based on this. This USPTO filing is for a “display device in a mobile terminal and method for controlling the same.” That was the patent filing speak, however you should be able to get a better idea of what this is from the above drawing. Basically, you have your main display and then two slide-out sub-display panels.
These sub-display panels would serve as additional real estate and be customizable based on the application you are using at the time. One example shown was in regards to the camera. In this instance the left sub-display has what appears to be the image gallery and the right sub-display has camera function keys such as zoom and focus.
All in all a neat concept, but we cannot necessarily see this working for a smartphone these days. While there are probably plenty of reasons why not, one example that comes to mind deals with thickness. Smartphones seem to be shrinking in thickness these days and having those slide-out sub-displays sounds like it would only add to the overall thickness. So how about it, any thoughts as to how something like this could come to market as desired product?
[via Engadget]
