Patent Application
20100225600
1. Field of the Disclosure
The disclosure relates in general to handheld electronic devices, and more particularly, to providing touch screen haptic feedback and audio to hand held electronic devices.
2. Background Art
Over the years various hand held electronic devices, have been developed or suggested, such as hand held communication devices, including radiotelephones, cellular (cell) phones, mobile phones, smart phones, personal digital assistant (PDA), wireless devices, two way pagers, and touch screen mobile devices. These conventional hand held electronic devices have met with various degrees of success.
Many conventional electronic devices have small displays which are difficult to read as well as difficult to input information or data via a touch screen. Some newer hand held electronic devices have a large display with a touch screen having a touch sensitive input surface. It is desirable that the area of the display be very large or occupy nearly the entire surface for better view and that the electronic device deliver good audio and haptics including feel, touch feedback and sensitivity to the user. Conventional hand held electronic devices and touch screen mobile devices, however, do not provide effective localized haptics and audio at the user interface. Furthermore, conventional hand held electronic devices are often difficult to assemble and expensive to manufacture.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide an improved display structure for an electronic device which overcomes most, if not all, of the preceding problems.
An improved display structure for an electronic device is provided that is user-friendly, reliable, and effective. The novel display structure is simple to use, easy to manufacture and economical. Advantageously, the special display structure can generate excellent localized haptics and sound to the display area. Desirably, novel display structure has direct bonding of piezoelectric elements to the back of the display which simplifies the structure and assembly.
Preferably, actuation of piezoelectric elements in the display structure generates bending motion of the entire display structure which can provide effective haptic feedback to fingers operating on the display structure as well as generate enhanced sound including voice, tones and music by turning part or the entire display into a speaker.
The inventive display structure for an electronic device can comprise a touch sensitive lens having an input lens surface for generating a signal in response to a manually engageable input from a user when the user touches the lens with a finger. The display structure can also have a display module comprising a light emitting display for emitting light forming an image on the lens in response to the signal as well as can have a bezel which can provide a back plate, with or without a rim, for holding the light emitting display, such as by using adhesive. Significantly, piezoelectric elements can be secured directly to the display module for generating bending motion to the display structure and providing haptic feedback to one or more of the user's fingers touching the display surface and for transmitting acoustic waves from the lens surface.
When the surface of the lens is in contact of human ear the piezoelectrically actuated display structure also serves as a bone conduction speaker, in addition to being a conventional acoustic speaker which sends air acoustic wave to the user's ear canal. Bone conduction is the conduction of sound, or transmitting of acoustic waves, to the inner ear through the bones of the skull.
The piezoelectric elements can be bonded to a back of the display module, or to the light emitting display or to the bezel. The bezel can be a metal bezel or a plastic bezel. The display is preferably an organic light emitting diode (OLED). Desirably, the light emitting display is solid without gaps, air pockets, or voids. Advantageously, the display structure is a bendable display structure.
The lens can include a glass screen, touchpad, and/or a keyboard. The images displayed on the lens can be black and/or colored graphics, text, numbers, and/or alpha numeric images.
The electronic device can be an a radiotelephone, a cellular (cell) phone, a mobile phone, smart phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), an electronic device with a clamshell configuration, a mobile communications device, wireless device, wireless e-mail device, a two way pager, or other hand held electronic device.
In the illustrated embodiment, the display structure has optically clear adhesive (OCA) sandwiched between and bonding the lens to the light emitting display. A chassis, such as a circuit board and/or phone chassis, can be spaced from the piezoelectric elements in a direction opposite the display module and lens. A housing can be provided for holding the lens, chassis, and display module. A gasket can be positioned between and sealing the housing to a peripheral portion of the lens.
The novel display structure as described and claimed herein achieves unexpected surprisingly good results.
A more detailed explanation of the invention is provided in the following description and appended claims.
The following is a detailed description of the preferred embodiment of the invention and best mode for practicing the invention.
While this invention is susceptible of embodiment in many different forms, there is shown in the drawings and described herein in detail, specific embodiments of the invention with the understanding that the present disclosure is to be considered as an exemplification and is not intended to be limited to the illustrated embodiments.
It will be understood that the drawings are merely representations of the invention, and some of the parts and components may have been distorted from actual scale for purposes of pictorial clarity.
Referring to
The OLED has no or minimum gaps, air pockets, spaces or voids, inside its structure. Conventional display, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) can not typically be used in the display structure of this invention, because of the existence of multiple internal gaps, air pockets, spaces or voids in a LCD that undesirably damp or block vibrations. The OLED comprising the display module can substantially transfer mechanical vibration from one side to the other.
The piezoelectric elements can cooperate with each other to provide an actuator 124 (
In the preferred embodiment, a phone chassis 128 (
Optically clear adhesive (OCA) 130 (
In use, when the user touches the lens, the user interface and piezoelectric elements of the actuator cooperate with each other to generate clear viewable images on the display, provide superior haptics feedback to the user's finger touching the display, and deliver excellent sound to the user.
The piezoelectric elements which are directly bonded to the display module generate bending motion of the entire display structure and substantial mechanical vibrations. The display structure allows substantial transfer of mechanical vibrations to the user interface.
The piezoelectric actuation delivers effective localized haptics and audio at the user interface through the display structure. The load on the display surface has minimum effect on the magnitude of sound and haptics due to the directly bending of the display structure with large area piezoelectric elements.
Desirably, the display glass vibrate to create the audio. The piezoelectric elements bonded on one side of the display can cause the display surface of the other side of the display module to bend.
Among the many advantages of the inventive display structure with piezoelectric actuation for electronic devices are:
Although embodiments of the invention have been shown and described, it is to be understood that various modifications, substitutions, and rearrangements of parts, components, as well as other uses of the display structure and electronic device, can be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the novel spirit and scope of this invention. The preceding description merely explains and illustrates the invention and the invention is not limited thereto except insofar as the appended claims are so limited.
