Samsung’s Still Perfecting It’s Foldable Smartphone

Samsung still working on a prototype for a foldable smartphone — a decade after they began

We consumers have become rather difficult to impress when it comes to smartphones now. Apple came through by removing the headphone jack from their iPhone 7. And Samsung too is making a lot of efforts to do something new, particularly after the Note 7 debacle. Rumors abound that Samsung might be launching a foldable smartphone soon. How soon, we don’t know, but what we do know now is that they’re about to begin testing a prototype for a phone that they’ve named Galaxy X for the time being.

Chip-Monks had begun talking about this super-secret project at Samsung way back in November 2015, when we’d heard they were testing two smartphones bearing different processors. Time passed and the phones didn’t make an appearance.

Then in December 2016, we wrote about the device again, since the wind had it that Samsung would be unveiling their miracle at the CES or MWC shows in 2017.

The world then heard about this when some other websites reported that Samsung had applied for the patents for their technology. We wrote about that in February 2017, and you can read that article here.

Well, it’s time for another update.

Keeping with our first report on the matter, there’s validation that the prototype will be a foldable smartphone, with a horizontal joint in the middle of the phone. This joint will make it possible for the phone to be folded up to 180 degrees after usage. The hinge will hold together two OLED displays of 5 inches.

It’s worth noting though, that this isn’t a completely original design. We know that devices actually in the market, like the Kyocera Echo and NEC’s Medias W N-05E, have had similar designs for their foldable smartphones.

But like Apple, Samsung seems to be veering towards “being the best, is better than being first”. This has been a long term project for Samsung, and they haven’t spared any expenses in growing the tech before they launch it to the world.

They have another advantage too — they own Samsung Display — their very on display manufacturing division that can back them on all the experimentation, testing and redesign — for as long as Samsung needs. Plus there are none of the perils of outsource their research and development to third parties.

The Investor, a South Korean publication, reported that Samsung has placed orders for the production of only a limited number of prototypes, 3,000 at the most. We can expect this to be completed by the first half of this year.
“Samsung seems to be testing the waters with the dual-screen device to gather ideas about its upcoming foldable phone”.

And this is the right move too. There are bound to be some potholes and cracks that develop during testing. After the Note7 dud, Samsung will be loathe to ensure this new tech is sweated properly and all defects and opportunities so revealed be corrected effectively.

This will also allow the company to test out the potential of foldable devices. If all works out, we might see Samsung’s “newest” invention in the market in the coming two years or so.

With LG’s rollable panels in the works and Samsung’s curved displays already in the market, the South Korean tech company doesn’t have a lot of time to achieve its ambitions. While we might be anticipating foldable phones with enthusiasm, their usefulness and lifespan is still a question. Samsung will still need to add some promising new features in these smartphones to gain attention in the market, other than the foldable “novelty”.

The company has seen quite a lot of ups and downs, and is still well above water, but with growing disenchantment with “gimmicky” features on devices, Samsung definitely needs to get this right, by ensuring that the new capability comes with some uses, and isn’t developed in version 2 or 3 (like they did by releasing Edge displays that hardly did anything on the 2014 Samsung Galaxy Note edge, and only began to justify their existence with the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge a full one and a half years later!)

Originally published at Chip-Monks.