Apple has filed a patent for flexible batteries that could easily fit the upcoming iWatch… or not. As usual, the Cupertino-based company is super secretive about its plans and we’ll rather have to wait for few more weeks and/or months to get all the details about their smart watch product.
Meanwhile, the mentioned patent is pretty clever, describing flexible battery packs made out of thin, curved batteries. With something like this, Apple would be able to make the entire wriststrap a battery, enabling longer usage between charges.
According to Patently Apple, which discovered the patent at the US Patent & Trademark Office, this invention can overcome one or more of the drawbacks of conventional battery packs…
In one embodiment of the present disclosure, the flexible battery pack may include a plurality of cells, such as galvanic or photovoltaic cells. The battery pack also may include a plurality of laminate layers coupled to the cells that include a top laminate layer and a bottom laminate layer.
An adhesive may be used to couple the top and bottom laminate layers together such that each of the plurality of cells is isolated from each other. This arrangement may allow the battery to be shaped to fit a form factor of the electronic device. This arrangement also may allow one or more of the cells to be selectively removed from the plurality, which may be desirable from a manufacturing perspective.
We like the way Apple is thinking – instead of placing the battery behind the face plate, they’ll use the wriststrap to make the end product thinner while potentially delivering extra-long battery life. Sounds promising, don’t you think?