The iPhone you have right now, and are possibly reading this story on, is already a glorified glass slab — albeit one wrapped in a metal frame. But what if your entire iPhone was made at glass? It's something Apple has suggested in the past, and this new patent may give us an idea of what it could look like.
According to the patent this wouldn't be a phone that's glass, glass and nothing but glass. That would be ridiculous, and honestly far from feasible at any point in the foreseeable future. Instead this patent seems to be exploiting some design trickery to make it look like it's an all-glass phone — even if the insides are unchanged.
How, you might say? Well it all comes down to a design choice we've heard rumored for iPhone 20. The patent describes the device as having a "six-sided glass enclosure defining an interior volume and comprising a first glass member and a second glass member."
Or to put it more simply, the front glass sheet will curve around all four edges of the phone, replacing the metal frame. This then connects to a second sheet of glass at the back of the phone, all sandwiched around the internals.
Apple wants this device to look "visually and tactilely seamless", so the idea is that you won't be able to tell where one piece of glass ends and the second begins. However, the patent also notes that it might also end up being multiple pieces of glass stitched together, rather than one continuous piece.
This makes sense, considering how hard a claw-esque glass panel must be to manufacture.
Other features we could see on the all-glass iPhone
According to the patent, those four curved edges won't just be for show. It mentions that the edges may be used to display content, and offer touch sensitivity. How that content might be displayed isn't clear, but the patent graphics do show touchscreen buttons (if you can call them that) for volume, Wi-Fi and what seems to be Airplane mode.
Maybe the edges are being envisioned as a new version of the Control Center, rather than the traditional pull-down menu? There's also the possibility of things like media controls, navigational buttons or other things of that ilk — some of which we saw on Samsung Galaxy phones with early versions of the Edge display.
Apple also says there will be holes for microphones and speakers, so those things may not be hiding under the display like Face ID is expected to.
While this design does share some similarities with what Apple is rumored to be doing with iPhone 20, there's no telling if and when this all-glass iPhone may launch. Patents aren't a guarantee that something will happen, and things may change as physical mockups are built depending on what works and what doesn't.
So we're just going to have to wait and see how this plays out. In the meantime we still have the iPhone 17 launch to look forward to — with rumors that the Apple event will take place on September 9.
This is what the iPhone of the future might look like, but what kind of device will it actually be? Check out our predictions for what the iPhone of 2035 might be able to accomplish.
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