Apple has been granted patent for devices featuring Samsung Edge-style, curved glass sidewall with virtual buttons. The approach is the same as that used by Samsung on its Galaxy Edge devices. However, Apple had applied for the patent in May 2014, almost a full year before Samsung launched its first Edge device.

Apple’s patent reads:

Electronic devices may be provided that contain flexible displays that are bent to form displays on multiple surfaces of the devices. Bent flexible displays may be bent to form front side displays and edge displays. Edge displays may be separated from front side displays or from other edge displays using patterned housing members, printed or painted masks, or by selectively activating and inactivating display pixels associated with the flexible display. Edge displays may alternately function as virtual buttons, virtual switches, or informational displays that are supplemental to front side displays. Virtual buttons may include transparent button members, lenses, haptic feedback components, audio feedback components, or other components for providing feedback to a user when virtual buttons are activated.

In that way, the device might have a square-edge design, disguising the fact that it is created by an underlying curved display.

The patent also describes the possibility of gestures being used to bring up different sets of controls on the edge of the screen.

Predetermined inputs to the touch-sensitive layer on the edge of the device (e.g., tapping, sliding, swiping, or other motions of an external object such as a finger across the edge of the device) may be used to change the operating mode of the device.

With the iPhone 7 looking set to have only minor external design changes, it has been suggested that Apple may be planning a more radical design change for a 10th anniversary iPhone next year. This future model could also ghave an all-glass design, as previous reports suggested, and a new Nikkei story also backed:

Foxconn Technology Group is developing a glass casing for smartphones as its key client Apple Inc. is said to be revamping the iPhone, people familiar with the developments say. Apple is expected to redesign the iPhone, including giving it a glass chassis, in 2017.

A Nikkei source said that Foxconn had been working on developing a glass chassis since last year, though an earlier report made the unlikely-sounding claim that only one iPhone model would make the switch to an all-glass casing.

The piece also repeats the expectation that Apple will upgrade the display technology used in iPhones from LCD to OLED.