Multiple recently published patents show at one time Microsoft was serious about a dual-screened smartphone

Microsoft has been playing around with the idea of a dual-screened smart mobile device for at least 10 years now, but rumour was that 2018 was the year the device would become a reality.

We later heard, however, via the same grapevine, that as recently as July 2018, Microsoft leadership felt the concept was not developed enough and shelved the idea until it could mature more.

In the meantime, other OEMs have continued to forge ahead, with Samsung showing of an actual working prototype at their Samsung Developer Conference last week.

While Microsoft’s efforts did not result in an actual shipping device it did generate a lot of patents, some more of which has been published today.

These appear to focus mainly on the unique Natural User Interface options available with a folding device, and some also look at ways of taking advantage of the larger surface area available with a folding device to allow such uses as stereo video and audio recording with wide input separation.

WalkingCat has collected the recent patents which are linked in his tweets below.

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1063099758447755265

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1063100513653153792

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1063101648547893249

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1063104329572220928

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1063109068921876482

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1063119662697902080

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1063121085049098240

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1063123812923756544

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1063124275668803585

It is not clear what will become of Microsoft’s folding phone, which apparently exists in prototype form somewhere on Microsoft’s campus, but even if it never comes to market Microsoft may be able to generate some revenue from licensing the concepts linked above.