Apple Inc.

James P Landry

David Andrew Doyle

Jean-Pierre Simon Guillou

Yi Qiao

Erik G De Jong

Tyler Robin Kakuda

Yifan Zhang

Paul C Kelley

Daniel J Barrett

Kiran S Pillai

Paul Stephen Drzaic

Ming Xu

Tsung-Ting Tsai

Shawn Robert Gettemy

Weijun Yao

Sameer Pandya

Michael J Brown

Injae Hwang

Zhen Zhang

Jiayi Jin

Ying-Chih Wang

Chuang Qian

Tae-Wook Koh

Maofeng Yang

Hao Dong

Yongjun Li

Di Liu

Yue Cui

Jiye Lee

Jung Yun Seuh

An electronic device may include a display, a cover layer overlapping the display, and a housing have housing sidewalls. An encapsulant material may surround at least part of the display and may be used to couple the cover layer to the housing sidewalls. A rigid outer material having a higher elastic modulus than the encapsulant material may also be used to couple the cover layer to the housing sidewalls. The rigid outer material may be a molded material that surrounds an outer perimeter of the encapsulant, or the rigid outer material may be a metal or plastic frame member having a C-shaped cross-section or other geometry. The display may overlap the housing sidewall. The encapsulant may absorb mechanical stresses on the cover layer to protect the display, whereas the rigid outer material may transfer mechanical stresses on the cover layer to the housing.

Electronic devices with display support structures

An electronic device may have a display mounted in a housing. The display may have a pixel array that produces images. A display cover layer may overlap the pixel array. The display cover layer may have a planar central area surrounded by a peripheral edge area with a curved cross-sectional profile. From an on-axis viewing angle, an image on the pixel array is fully viewable through the planar central area and the peripheral edge area. From an off-axis viewing angle, the image is partly viewable through the peripheral edge area and not through the central area. To avoid an undesired color cast in the partly viewable image seen through the peripheral edge area of the display cover layer, the display may be provided with color cast compensation structures such as a guest-host liquid crystal layer that exhibits an anisotropic colored light absorption characteristic, a diffuser layer, and/or other optical structures.

Electronic devices with curved display surfaces

An electronic device may include an electronic display including display pixels to display an image based on compensated image data. The electronic display may also include a stressed reference pixel to exhibit burn-in related aging in response to one or more stress sessions and a non-stressed reference pixel configured to not undergo the one or more stress sessions. Additionally, the electronic device may include image processing circuitry to determine a panel-specific aging profile based on a comparison between one or more properties of the stressed reference pixel and the one or more properties of the non-stressed reference pixel. The image processing circuitry may also generate one or more gain maps based on the panel-specific aging profile and generate the compensated image data by applying the one or more gain maps to input image data.

Reference pixel stressing for burn-in compensation systems and methods

An electronic device may have a display that displays an image. The image may be viewed through a display cover layer that overlaps the display. The display cover layer may include an optical coupling layer such as a coherent fiber bundle. A pixel expansion layer such as a diffractive layer may be incorporated between the optical coupling layer and a protective layer. The diffractive layer may create duplicate pixels to occupy otherwise non-light-emitting areas on the output surface of the display cover layer. The diffractive layer may also create duplicate pixels that overlap adjacent pixels to allow for brightness averaging. An adhesive layer or the protective layer may be used to form diffractive elements for the diffractive layer. An adhesive layer having a high index of refraction may be interposed between the optical coupling layer and the display panel to mitigate undesired reflections of ambient light.

Electronic device with an optical coupling layer and diffractive layer

An electronic device may have a hinge that allows the device to be flexed about a bend axis. A display may span the bend axis. To protect display elements such as pixel circuitry from excessive mechanical stress, the display may include one or more structural protective layers. A structural layer may be incorporated into the display stack as a supportive backing behind the pixel circuitry and/or as a protective cover over the pixel circuitry. The structural layer may include rigid portions and flexible portions. The flexible portions may contain flexible material that separates and adjoins adjacent rigid structures or that fills grooves between adjacent rigid portions. The rigid portions may be formed from thin sheets of glass or other transparent materials. The flexible material in the structural layer may be an elastomeric material having a refractive index that matches that of the glass sheets in the structural layer.

Electronic devices with robust flexible displays

Growing community of inventors

Cupertino, CA, United States of America

James P Landry