Even if Apple thought Antennagate was overblown, let’s face it: their last attempt to put the iPhone’s antenna into the exposed edges of the device didn’t work out so well, prompting a PR catastrophe so bad that Apple was actually forced to hold an emergency press conference… something they never do.
That in and of itself suggests pretty strongly that Apple’s going to try something new for the iPhone antenna in future handsets, and if a new patent is any indication, that new approach to hiding the iPhone’s antenna may be by hiding it under the iconic Apple logo.
Apple’s calling this technology, simply, the “Logo Antenna” but it’s not just for iPhone: the patent interestingly makes it clear that the same tech could be used for future 3G (or even 4G) equipped MacBooks.
According to Patently Apple, the new technology would use the existing unibody machining process, allowing the case itself to acts as conductive sidewalls to the antenna, protecting it from attenuation. The goal is for the new logo antenna to “gain a stronger signal without intervening metal or other conductive housing walls interfering.”
Pretty neat, and a lot less pie-in-the-sky than a lot of Apple patents we see these days.
