Think the Samsung Edge display was cool? Something cooler is on
the way. We’ve been hearing about foldable displays for a number of years, and
Samsung finally gave us an idea of what a phone with this technology will look
like at its annual Samsung Developer Conference.
Information
about the phone, which has been rumored to be called the Galaxy X or
Galaxy F (not to be confused with the Galaxy S10 that
we also anticipate), has slowly been trickling out over the last year or two.
We’ll be referring to it as Samsung’s foldable phone to keep things simple
until an official name is revealed. Here’s everything we think we know about it
so far.
RELEASE AND PRICE
So when should we expect to
see Samsung’s folding masterpiece out in the wild? Rumors suggested that the
phone wouldn’t make its way to consumers until 2019, and now it’s almost
certain that those rumors were true. At the Samsung Developer Conference,
Samsung said that it would be ready to mass-produce foldable displays in
“coming months,” which means that the phone itself probably won’t make an
appearance until a few months after that
Unfortunately,
Samsung didn’t reveal too much about the design of the phone, beyond the
display and what it can do, but we do know that you’ll be able to use the phone
when it’s folded up as well, and it will act like a traditional Smartphone in
this mode. Samsung also announced it’s working with Google to develop a new
user interface for Android on its Smartphone — dubbed OneUI — and it will allow
for features specific to foldable phones. All of these announcements were made
at Samsung’s developer conference, meaning the company still needs third-party
developers to bring foldable phone support to their apps.
The
new display is called the “Infinity Flex Display.” It’s designed to be folded
and unfolded repeatedly without degrading the display quality. Samsung said it
can be folded hundreds of thousands of times without showing signs of wear and
tear. The display was wrapped in a chunky outer shell that Samsung said was
specifically done to keep the design a secret. We do know that the screen will
measure 7.3-inches when folded out.
While
the main thing that Samsung showed off at the conference was the display, the
company is working on a number of different applications for flexible displays,
including rollable displays and stretchable ones. Those types likely won’t make
an appearance in this particular device, but their development could help
Samsung make a display with a more durable build. As mentioned, Samsung said
that the display on the new device could be folded “hundreds of thousands” of
times, essentially meaning that it should last much longer than the average
life span of a smartphone
On
stage, we saw the display was folded and unfolded a few times. When unfolded,
the device looked largely like a tablet — and when folded up, the outer display
immediately activated and displayed whatever app was open at the time. Based on
what we saw, it seemed as though the device had two displays — one larger
display on the inside, and one smaller one to be used when the device was
folded up. In other words, instead of the device folding out to use the same
display when folded, the main display folded into the device to then activate
the smaller exterior display.
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