Samsung Inching Closer To A Foldable Phone
A phone that folds in the middle like a book, but we’re unsure if anybody would really want one.
If rumours are to be believed, Samsung may finally bring out a foldable phone sometime this year. The Korean megabrand has been working on the concept for a couple years now, and new reports seem to suggest that the company may bring out a commercial product by the fourth quarter of this year.
The new reports come on the basis of a patent’s filing information that was recently leaked. According to recently submitted patents, dated 31st January 2017, Samsung is working on a flexible display device that folds in the middle. It would give the phone a book-like shape, allowing for the users to open the device up to make it larger.
This is not the first foldable phone design we have seen from Samsung. Earlier last year, Samsung was working on a similar design, going for a tablet that folds into a phone (which honestly seemed like a better idea than a simple folding phone).
Earlier designs for the foldable phone have rather been on the lines of the impractical, and the otherworldly. Samsung, at one time, explored quite an unusual design idea, that included cylindrical shapes, from which the display rolls out like a window blind.
Most recent designs however have been far more practical, and quite similar, seemingly inspired from the old flip phones from back in the days when Motorola was the class. In fact of late another concept of a foldable phone from Samsung was spotted, in exactly that shape — a flip phone from yesteryear.
A book-like design makes a lot of sense, when one does think of it. While on the one hand, the cylinder with a roll-down screen would be quite a novelty, the practicality of it simply does not exist. There are quite many components in a phone that will not, and cannot, fold, and they need to be housed somewhere. With a book-like design, there is ample flat space to house those.
The logistics of hardware however are not the only obstacles the company will have to tackle.
What one also needs to question with ideas of this kind is their practicality, and the market they might be appealing to.
While the ideas seem quite novel, the market for something of this kind, quite like the Blue Ray’s that lasted only a couple years after the floppies, can be quite short term and limited.
A fancy phone is a good show off and a play thing — but for how long before people tire of it and move on to the next?!
What can perhaps be an appealing idea can be a phone that can be unfolded into something else, like say a tablet. That can only function if the book-like phone does not need to be opened again and again to be used, instead it can be used as a phone when closed, and as a tablet when opened. For something of this kind there still might be a market, but if this turns bulky and heavy, one shouldn’t lay too many bets on it either.
Samsung is not the only brand to be working on something of the kind. LG has already marketed a flexible phone that bends up to a certain point. It also recently showed off a working model of an 18-inch Ultra HD screen that used a special film instead of plastic as backing, thus allowing the screen to be rolled into a tight tube for transport, much like a sheet of paper! This was back in 2014, and at the time, the screen was expected to be on devices in 2017. We however don’t have more news on it, yet.
Rumours about Samsung’s foldable phone have existed since late 2015, when the market was expecting a groundbreaking device in 2016. But as the year has shown, the company has simply not been ready for something of the kind to hit the market yet, and the Note7 disaster which simply won’t go away is not doing the company any more favours.
Bringing tech of this kind is quite obviously going to be an arduous task for Samsung. The project has been facing multiple issues, in the three years that it has rumoured to have been in existence. These include issues like not having the resources to mass-produce flexible displays, or finding ways to make essential components flexible.
With the rumours making the rounds again, we might be able to see something in the latter part of the year. Though, the truth is that even if we do, and even if Samsung goes ahead and brings the genie out of the lab, and launches it commercially — the feasibility of which has been under much debate — we probably won’t be laying hands on it until well into 2018.
We shall, however, keep an ear out for the news.
Originally published at Chip-Monks.
