Apple doesn’t want you to use iPhones with cracked display, here’s how it may stop you – Times of India

Apple iPhones in the future may come with a system that will notify the users about a damaged display using a crack detection resistor. In a patent that has been granted to the Cupertino-based tech giant by the US Patent and Trademark Office, the company highlights how it wants to offer a mechanism that will solve the problem to unnoticed cracks on the iPhone display or restrain those who choose to continue to use an iPhone that has a broken display.
According to a report by Apple Insider, the patent — titled Electronic device display with monitoring circuitry utilising a crack detection resistor — Apple wants to add a section called “bent tail portion” to the edge of a display. This section will then be used to interface with the handset’s system to notify users about the cracker display.
How may it work?
Apple wants to place a strain-sensing resistor along with temperature compensation resistor to create “meandering metal traces.” The patent says that Strain measurements may be obtained by subtracting the temperature compensation resistance from the strain sensing resistance. This essentially means that a warm display may be more pliable and therefore more likely to crack than a cold version.
The patent also mentions a crack detection line that is “formed from a loop-shaped signal path with two parallel metal traces that runs along the periphery of the active area of the display. A crack detection circuit may use resistance monitoring circuitry to measure resistance changes in one or more segments of the crack detection line that are indicative of cracking in the line and in structures elsewhere in the display.”
In simple words, the device will be able to check the resistance of the crack detection line to find out if the handset has a crack on the display or not.