More Microsoft Patents Hint At A Foldable Surface Phone

Yes, Surface Phone. We don’t know whether Microsoft will actually launch this mythic device, but there is every reason to believe that the company is at least working on it.

As the numerous patents filed by Redmond show.

A few more have made their way out, revealing that the technology giant is considering a foldable device. Although it has not been a physical hardware yet, Microsoft has quickly been ratcheting up its patent portfolio of foldable concepts and designs.

This latest hint has been provided by the reliable Microsoft leaker, Walking Cat, and details are of a portable device with adjustable optical arrangement. The idea being to address the camera layout on a device that lays two separate but attached pieces on top one another.

Like so:

As the patent artwork above shows, the patent is designed to help the device line up a lens once the foldable hardware is closed or collapsed onto itself. This implementation could be used for a camera, or even facial recognition software.

This is how the patent describes the working as:

“The complexity and adjustability of the optical arrangement may be limited by the space available in the device. In particular, the thickness of the device is often limited, allowing a strictly limited thickness or length of the optical arrangement only. This may be the case, for example, in foldable devices where the maximum thickness of each portion of the device is restricted by the maximum allowable overall thickness of the device in its folded position.”

Not bad.

Obviously, all these patents are still only early indicators that Microsoft is exploring a future with foldable and expansive devices. Whether that is a Surface Phone, or some other pioneering hardware, is anybody’s guess at the moment.

But if this does come to fruition, we may well get another category defining product from Microsoft.

If.