Canon Patent Applicaton: We get much bigger LCDs

I wasn't going to post this patent, and then I started to write up this article, and it made sense to include this patent with that article, so it should be in a separate patent post as well.  I do hope I'm reading this patent correctly. At times it's difficult to really know what the translation is stating from Japanese to English, which even further complicates the obtuse nature of patent literature.

This patent appears to be explaining out to include tactile control wheel and buttons on top of an LCD panel.  As we discussed in this article here, it's an interesting way of tackling the different ergonomic back panels that exist between the 77D, 80D and the 7D series camera lines.

With this layout you could effectively remove the need for an AF joystick since you could configure parts of the back of the screen to act like a touch and drag AF area.

There are some issues not mentioned in this patent application, such as this would most likely be applicable only with a fixed LCD on the back of the camera, and it would be less effective with a fully articulating screen on the camera, as in some orientations the button and control wheel would be flipped horizontally or vertically making usability difficult.  Conversely, this may work if the screen tilts, but doesn't tilt all the way to 180 degrees to face the front.

Japan Patent Application 2019-056856

While we feel this is a novel approach to solving some ergonomic issues, and giving us much larger LCD screens as well, this seems to be a very exploratory patent application that won't go much further.