A patent application filed by Apple a year ago (only made public today by the USPTO) reveals possible plans for a Smart Cover with a built in secondary display which could be used to show notifications or specific apps, Engadget reports. Titled ‘Cover Attachment With Flexible Display’, it would ‘greatly enhance’ the functionality of the tablet.
The secondary screen would get power from a connector on the side of the iPad, and it’s even possible, going off other drawings in the application, that the cover could be turned into a keyboard Microsoft Surface style.
Whether this will ever see the light of day is a different question, but you’d think that if it was a serious concept, Apple would have already created a couple of prototypes, given it was filed a year ago. We’ll have to wait and see.