We have seen all kinds of designs for foldable smartphones as well as foldable devices in general. Also, Samsung’s Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X have been announced with different foldable smartphone designs too. This shows that we will not be seeing the same designs for every foldable smartphone. This is where people are complaining at the moment as every smartphone looks the same from outside. We believe that the same will not be true whenever foldable smartphones go mainstream.
But till that time comes, we are likely to see some strange designs as well. These designs will imagine all kinds of possibilities but they are unlikely to be reproduced for commercial phones. Nonetheless, Google has been awarded a patent for its design of a foldable device. Although this design is a foldable device, it has multiple folds. Looking at the design, you will feel like this is the sketch of a notebook which has its pages spread wide.
In reality, it is an “electronic device” which means it is Google’s idea for a foldable device such as foldable smartphone or tablet. All the different folds of this design are held by the main part which can also be referred to as the spine of this phone. Also, this might be the place where all the components such as motherboard, chipset and battery along with other internals will be placed. Because it is difficult to put those components in the display area.
However, it is hard to think about the possible use cases of this multiple fold design. We have seen that foldable smartphones have folded displays so that they can be unfolded and it makes for larger display size. But this design has multiple disjoint displays and they might not provide a seamless experience. On the other hand, you can turn the displays and have different content on each of them.