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Recently, Apple filed a patent regarding materials it might be planning to use in a future generation of the iPhone or iPod Touch.  Right now Apple uses a kind of glass to cover it’s touch-screen devices, but a cheaper alternative, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), may be in their future.

Current technologies for touch-screen plastics place all of the wires that sense touch on the same plane.  If they are placed on different perpendicular planes (one set going one way, the other running at a 90 degree angle from the first), there is some kind of strategic advantage gained.  If you know why this is beneficial, please post it in the comments…inquiring minds want to know.  Anyway, this patent-pending innovation allows for multi-layer wiring in a plastic touch-screen, but with no added thickness when compared to thinner glass screens.  This would mean a less expensive screen with the same physical dimensions.

Here are the pretty pictures:

It doesn’t appear that this technology is at use in the new 3G iPhone, as the patent was only filed a few weeks before and no other news of it has surfaced before this.  Still, it’s nice to see where Apple is going (potentially) with their new technologies and innovations.

[Via Electronista]