Years ago Samsung's premium smartphones allowed their customers to easily replace the smartphone battery. The Galaxy S7 Edge makes it difficult for customers to replace the battery unless they're geeksfollowing a how-to video with specialized tools. With the Samsung Galaxy Note7 crisis now in full bloom, I'm sure that they regret abandoning this feature in an effort to match Apple's closed battery designs. Last week the U.S. Patent Office published a Samsung patent application that was only filed in June of this year illustrating a modern Edge smartphone design with a backside battery panel clearly present. Will Samsung bring this feature back in the future? Only time will tell.
As illustrated in Samsung's patent FIG. 6 noted below, illustrates a screen example where the rear surface of the portable terminal is shown, and the event information #400 is output on the auxiliary display area #120 of the flexible display unit in the state where the front surface of the portable terminal contacts the surface of the table. In addition, patent FIG. 6 illustrates a rear surface camera module #F500 and a removable battery cover #550.
The bulk of the patent is discussing using a smartphone in silent alarm mode. When in a meeting or in a classroom and the smartphone is face down on a table, a message (text or email) may awaken the smartphone in silent mode to display an emergency message on the display on the edge of the smartphone, only if the smartphone is face down on a surface.
While it's difficult to believe that as smartphones are aiming to get thinner every year and waterproofing being a priority for most, that a removable backside battery panel would actually be considered having a comeback. However, considering that Samsung makes many mid-tier level smartphones where Apple doesn't, it may find a big enough market niche to justify manufacturing such a design.
With that being said, always remember that this is a patent application, and as such, this invention may never come to light.
About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.