AAPL Company

Apple patents sunglasses-friendly LCDs and clever batteries that don't explode

9to5 Staff | May 26 2011 - 7:58 am PT

Beutiful Tima looking, well, beautiful while using sunglasses in northern mounts of Tehran

Two new interesting patents from Apple have surfaced today in the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) database. The first, entitled “Display that Emits Circularly-Polarized Light”, describes a modified liquid-crystal display for gadgets like iPhones and iPods that lets you interact with it while wearing a polarized sunglasses. What’s wrong with polarized sunglasses, you ask… Well, protecting your eyes from harmful UV rays calls for a vertically vibrating electric field which interferes with linear polarizers found on LCDs, that’s what.

Hence, trying to look at an LCD through your badass-looking polarized sunglasses degrades on-screen images as a result of said interference. Apple’s invention is based on a last year patent that set the basic groundwork. Thew new filing calls for a modified LCD with a layer that “receives the linearly-polarized light on one surface, converts the linearly-polarized light to circularly-polarized light, and then emits the circularly-polarized light from another surface”.

Apple filed the patent under the classification number of 20110124260. The company credited the invention to engineers Wei Chen, Cheng Chen, John Z. Zhong, Shawn R. Gettemy and Victor H.E. Yin. If that was too great a mind job for you, how about pressure-relief battery pouches for mobile devices designed to avoid a potential fire hazard?

Patently Apple pointed at this cool filing that outlines special battery pouches engineered to help avoid a potential fire hazard. Remember the exploding iPod batteries? Exposing portable gadgets like cellphones and MP3 players that use lithium-ion batteries to direct sunlight for a prolonged period of time can lead to a gas buildup within a rechargeable lithium battery cell. The battery could swell as a result – even explode. Apple proposes a pressure-relief pouch, basically “a cathode with an active coating, a separator and an anode with an active coating”, per Apple’s filing classified under the identification number 20110123844. The jelly roll is then enclosed in a flexible pouch which includes a weakness that yields when internal pressure in the pouch exceeds a certain threshold, creating a hole which prevents further swelling and releases the internal pressure. This simple yet effective idea is credited to inventors Ramesh Bhardwaj, Taisup Hwang and Richard Mank. Those yearning to learn more about the aforementioned patents are advised to type in their respective filing number at the USPTO search page.