Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) recently filed for a patent for curved batteries for mobile devices, which now has the rumor mill going. Will the iPhone 6 be something entirely different? If you remember, not long ago Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) filed for a patent for a device made of curved glass, so it’s clear that the company is up to something, and it’s simply too soon to expect to see these patents in use on the iPhone 5S, which is expected to be out later this year.
An iPhone 6 Or An iWatch?
Some have speculated that the curved glass and curved battery patents mean that rather than an iPhone 6, we’ll see an iWatch, and this is certainly a reasonable guess. Wearable computing devices are definitely the future, as seen in Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Glass device and smart watches being developed by other companies. And if Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is going to enter the wearable computer device market, it’s sure to do so with a device that’s sleek and stylish—just like an iWatch made of curved glass would be.
So the question we have to ask now is whether an iPhone 6 will even be relevant by next year. Could it be that the iPhone 6 will be replaced with an iWatch instead?
Clues In The Filing Dates
Of course if you’re going to make a curved glass mobile device, the possibilities are endless—far beyond an iWatch or even a curved iPhone 6. Rumors indicate that Steve Jobs left behind instructions for the iPhone 6 before he died, and the filing date on the curved glass patent indicates that it’s certainly possible that his final plans had something to do with curved glass. The filing date on the patent is March 10, 2009. Even the patent for the curved battery has a filing date that could mean it came from Jobs’ mind. The date is Oct. 28, 2011—less than a month after his death.
So the iPhone 6 or iWatch or whatever the curved glass device turns out to be, could be something we can’t even imagine at this point. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) did change mobile computing and phones forever with the iPhone. Maybe it has at least one more innovation left to unveil.
