Samsung has now filed for several new patents in its home country of South Korea which all appear to be tied to smartphone antenna and sensor placements. That’s not necessarily groundbreaking but could indicate that the company is trying to avoid having to put an iPhone or Essential PH-1 style notch on the screen to house the hardware. The most obvious device Samsung could feasibly use the patents to create is the company’s Galaxy S9, which isn’t slated for release until sometime in early 2018. That would make sense given the bezel-free design of the devices in the patents. Although that aspect of the patents doesn’t necessarily give anything away on that front, there aren’t too many other reasons for a manufacturer to put antennas or sensors normally allocated to the bezels into the frames instead.
The patents themselves point to various placements for those components within the frame of the device itself. That’s not necessarily a new thing, as several smartphones prior to these patents have embedded the antenna in the frame with widely mixed results. While some devices of the past fared relatively well and didn’t experience any issues while others – such as Apple’s iPhone 4 – resulted in the company having to actively address problems with dropped calls and network connections. Samsung likely just wants to avoid having to deal with those types of PR nightmares and is examining a variety of placements in order to determine which, if any, is most viable. Obviously, they can’t, or at least it is extremely unlikely, that they will all be used. However, by filing several patents at once, the company is protected from possible infringement cases which could be brought to bear if one or two of the designs meet its expectations but is under a patent snapped up by another OEM.
Leading to the speculation that this patent is directly linked to Samsung’s upcoming and as-yet-unannounced Galaxy S9, is that the fact that the next flagship from the company will reportedly arrive with an unheard-of 90-percent screen-to-body ratio. That much display real-estate doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for sensors or antenna, even with today’s latest advancements. So it makes sense that Samsung would be exploring its options before finalizing its design.
