Apple In-Cell Touch Patent Set For iPhone 5

This week a new Apple patent has been revealed just in time for the iPhone 5 – or new iPhone – or whatever you want to call it, complete with in-cell touch display tech. This new technology will allow Apple to work with a significantly thinner display in the next generation of their mobile devices, this allowing for bigger batteries or thinner devices overall. This patent shows how the LCD and touch recognition hardware can be integrated into one unit instead of two, combining them for the thinnest solution for smartphones and tablets yet.

This technology will not only allow Apple to slim down the amount of hardware they need to make a device, it'll also lessen the cost of the final unit. Here Apple will do one of two things. The first could be Apple having electrodes both working with display duties and allowing touch input. The second is taking the same two electrodes needed now and pushing them into one pixel.

This patent was filed all the way back in 2007 before the first iPhone was revealed. The patent process can take this long on a regular basis, with patents sitting in limbo for several years before they're finally granted. This patent took, believe it or not, five years to make it to its final granted stage.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see other recent new iPhone news for more clues as to what we'll be seeing this year. We're expecting that September 12th will be the day for the reveal of the next iPhone while later that month we'll see shipments – it's all in the tips thus far!

[via Engadget]