Latest Galaxy Design Patent Suggests Samsung Could Be Taking a Break from Copying Apple

Samsung has a fairly rich and extensive history of following certain tech trends established by its fiercest competitors. Yet, it’s primarily in light of that proverbial cat and mouse game that the South Korean Galaxy manufacturer has seamlessly landed itself in deep pools of hot legal water.

In light of all that courtroom drama, however, perhaps it’s not surprising to see that Samsung has paid a much over-due visit to the drawing board — likely as part of an ongoing effort to further differentiate itself from rivals like, for instance, its Cupertino, California-based arch-nemesis in the tech realm.

Why, just consider Samsung’s most recently awarded patents, for instance — which, according to their applications, reveal that the South Korean tech-giant might currently be in the process of experimenting with various shapes, sizes, and implementations of the Galaxy’s combined home-button and fingerprint sensor.

The patents in question, which outline a re-engineered, redesigned fingerprint sensor of unknown specifications, show us that Samsung is perhaps staging a departure from its generations-old method of cramming the home button and fingerprint sensor into a single module embedded beneath the display of its flagship Galaxy handsets.

As opposed to the standard, fingerprint-embedded home key that Galaxy users have grown accustomed to using over the years, Samsung, with its patent filing, appears to have proposed a new method of unlocking future Galaxy devices — by which the fingerprint sensor has been relocated to the rear of the device, while the standard home key, itself, appears to have shifted in terms of both shape and size.

What’s still unknown, of course, is whether or not these new patents, in and of themselves, foretell of an impending change in the physical design of Samsung’s Galaxy S devices or when this type of transition will be taking place.

Recent rumors suggest that Apple — one of Samsung’s fiercest competitors — may be gearing up to release an entirely new iPhone design in 2017, perhaps featuring an edge-to-edge display, within which the Cupertino-company’s patented Touch ID fingerprint scanner will be embedded.

And so, seeing as how Samsung certainly wouldn’t want to be left in the lurch of its primary competition, it’s safe to say the South Korean smartphone-maker might be experimenting with some new and innovative ideas on how to advance its own devices, while still keeping pace with the current trends.

Of course, we still have a ways to go until the ‘Galaxy S8’ is revealed in early 2017 — so we won’t know for certain until then what changes, if any, are coming. And no, unfortunately, the Galaxy Note 7 likely won’t feature any of these new home-button designs.

What do you think about Samsung’s new home-button designs? Let us know in the comments!