If you’ve ever longed for a phone accessory that would give your device physical gaming controls and a secondary screen capable of an autostereoscopic 3D effect like the Nintendo 3DS, a new patent put into the World Intellectual Property Organization’s database may be right up your alley. The invention consists of a foldable mount that your phone would go into, along with a bottom screen and game controls. Both displays would have an overlay of sorts, coupled to a separate processor inside the patented device itself, that catches rendering passes from your phone and uses the geometry therein to calculate how to stitch together a stretched anamorphic image, as seen in the below pictures, and how to render an autostereoscopic image on the special screens.
To put it as simply as possible, the device has its own bottom screen, and your phone serves as the top screen. Using a special overlay and on-board processing, imagery on the phone from compatible apps and games is stretched over both screens, and they’re both given a 3D effect similar to Nintendo’s beloved 3DS handheld or HTC’s arguably underappreciated EVO 3D. Other pictures show a separate two-screened device altogether that rather resembles the Lenovo Yoga Book, and seems to plug into a phone or otherwise connect in an external manner. Presumably, if this device is another released variant of the patented gaming accessory, it would rely on an outside controller of some sort, perhaps allowing users to play with whatever Bluetooth or USB-OTG controllers they happen to have on hand.
While the photos would imply that there is at least one prototype unit out in the wild, one should still bear in mind that this is just a patent, and may not see the light of day as a commercial product. For now, this means that people wanting a secondary display, 3D and physical game controls all on the same device at the same time are mostly out of luck. There are a handful of older 3D phones that may be able to play some content in 3D, there is a similarly small number of dual-screen phones available, and there are tons of Bluetooth controllers out there that will turn any phone into a handheld game console. This patent, if it comes to fruition, would represent the first fusion of all of those items on the market.
