Every smartphone owner is aware of bezels. Bezel in a smartphone is the area surrounding the display. Over the years smartphone manufactures have been trying hard to keep the bezels as thin as possible, but no one has ever thought of giving them some purpose. Nokia now has come up and patented the idea of making the bezels an input device of a smartphone or tablet. The details of the patent application submitted by Nokia Corporation in 2013 were made public recently. According to this patent Nokia will be adding touch functionality in the bezels of its smartphone and tablets.


If you have taken a look at the image above you would have immediately found out the drawback of implementing active bezels. We often hold a smartphone from the bezels and giving them touch functionality will just increase the number of inadvertent inputs to the smartphone. Nokia however has found a solution to this problem. According to the patent the bezels won’t be activated until the user applies sufficient pressure to them. The active bezels would be optional and they can be turned off and on at the desired moment. The software would also play an important role in this process, as its gets to decide bezels on which side remain active. Nokia also fleetingly mentions how this technology will facilitate smaller displays, so we speculate that this concept might be put in application in Nokia’s wearables.

To know more about active digital bezels head over to the #-Link-Snipped-# and the news coverage on Nokia patents active bezels for phones and tablets - PhoneArena.