This week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office revealed 29 design patents covering everything from ovens to refrigerators, cameras and more. There were a couple that stood out from the pack this week but one in particular. Today's report introduces you to a new smartphone design with dual rounded side edges and an interesting top-side pop-up feature that's left as an undescribed mystery.

Unlike "patent applications," design patents published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office don't reveal pertinent information about a particular design. We can look at the design and appreciate it for what it projects, but we'll never discover which materials may be used to construct the design. We'll never know what unique internal components may be hidden within the device or learn about any unique features that we could look forward to. All we get is the simple visual of what could be coming down the pipeline.

That's very frustrating, especially with Samsung's latest design patent where something is purposely shown and yet we're left completely in the dark as to what functionality it could possibly bring to future owners.

In patent figure 8 noted below we're able to see the rounded edges of the phone and a slightly recessed top side.









The backside of this smartphone design noted above reveals that the side edges will accommodate popular app and function icons representing things like a camera, settings, email and more when the phone is in use.

This patent figure also shows us the camera area which is interesting when you go to the next patent figure where the mysterious pop-up feature appears but seen only from the front side.





The front side of the design of patent FIG. 10 shows a mystery feature popping up from inside the phone casing. Is it the camera popping up to expose a miniature zoom lens or a second camera for a 3D shot? Is it a new kind of camera flash unit? Is it a new kind of antenna for satellite reception? We don't know what is it because design patent don't have to reveal specific features and functions as we noted at the top of our report.

An interesting report by SamMobile at the beginning of the year noted the following:

"Samsung usually tests multiple variants of its flagship device before actually releasing them. According to the conversation on Reddit, it seems that Samsung is testing at least three variants of the Galaxy S6, one with a one-sided curved edge display, another with a dual-sided curved edge display, and one more with a normal display."

With Samsung reporting ongoing profit losses because Apple is beating them at the high end of the smartphone market and China's Xiaomi is beating them in the low-to-mid range of the market, they need to shake things up with new original smartphone designs that will offer consumers something refreshing. Could the current Samsung design patent published this week be one of their new smartphone design coming to market? Only time will tell.

A Note for Tech Sites covering our Report: We ask tech sites covering our report to kindly limit the use of our graphics to one image. Thanking you in advance for your cooperation.





