Leaks and rumours on the foldable smartphone by Samsung have been going around for a few months now and for the first time, Samsung reveals the smartphone at the Developer Conference in San Francisco.
Unlike the FlexPai, Samsung’s foldable smartphone can be folded all the way just like a book, and when it’s unfolded it measures at 7.3 inches. Samsung also called their new display the Infinity Flex Display when unfolded and when folded, it’s referred to as the Cover Display. The phone comes with multiple layers that includes flexible backplane for the foldability and shock absorbent film to prevent the phone from easily breaking. Samsung also created a new polariser that is 45% thinner to allow the phone to be folded properly, in addition to announcing that they plan on creating technology that can allow rollable and stretchable displays in the future. Apart from that, it was announced that the foldable smartphone will be able to run up to three apps at once.
Many are now guessing the name of the Samsung’s foldable phone, some calling it the Galaxy X while the others referring it as the Galaxy F. Though the smartphone is still just a prototype, Justin Denison, Samsung’s SVP of mobile product marketing announced that there will be a mass production of the Infinity Flex Display in “matter of months” which means that the smartphone might be released as early as the first half of next year.
Though Royole is the first startup to released their foldable Android phone called the FlexPai, the smartphone did not seem as practical because few issues where spotted when it was displayed and it cannot be fully folded unlike the Samsung’s foldable smartphone, which makes it less convenient to be carried around, in addition to the smartphone having a 7.8 inch display. There are also other smartphone brands that hinted on releasing foldable smartphones such as Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi and also LG.
Although this is a great advancement in technology, we will have to wait till next year to know if the foldable smartphones are going to be well-received by consumers.