KUALA LUMPUR, May 19 — Foldable phones don’t appear to be going away anytime soon, and Samsung is a brand that appears to be really invested in the technology as the future of mobile phones.
I mean, there are already a variety of options now: from the Galaxy Z Fold 2 (which was a big improvement over the original Fold), all the way to the Z Flip series, which is sort of a futuristic throwback to clamshell phones of years gone by.
Regardless, to stay stagnant is to go backwards — particularly in the fast-moving technology industry. Which is why the South Korean company appears to be toying around with a couple of ideas for its mobile screens, as evidenced by Samsung Display’s recent visual showcase during the virtual Display Week exhibition.
This first one is called the S-foldable, which basically takes the existing foldable screen tech — and adds another fold to it. If you don’t like the crease on the Z Fold 2... well, this has two of them.
Still, it unfolds into a 7.2″ display, and the bi-folding device can be folded inwards or outwards. Not exactly sure what benefits you’d derive from that, but hey, it’s a prototype, and it looks fun.
Next up, Samsung also unveiled a slideable screen model — which looks similar to what Oppo unveiled recently with a rollable OLED. Samsung reportedly holds a patent on this type of technology, and the idea here is that the screen won’t actually need to be folded. Instead, it’s rolled away within the body of the phone.
Something else that’s very interesting is the 17″ foldable panel shown off here. This is essentially a gigantic version of the existing foldable tech on the Z Fold 2, but it offers the sort of screen real estate that you’d associate with a large laptop — the Galaxy Tab S7+ only has a 12.4″ display, for some context.
And finally, the company also showed off its Under Panel Camera display. This is something that has been teased and rumoured for a long time to arrive on Samsung’s phones (not just foldable ones), and it might be the best way to finally be rid of hole-punch cutouts, notches, or teardrop/dewdrops on displays.
Rumour says that we’ll see the UDC on the next foldable phones from Samsung, but as for the rest of the tech above, everything is still at the prototype stage.
Regardless, it offers a peek into the future, and if I had to wager a guess, I’d say that the slideable OLED tech looks to be the most promising, and the likeliest to appear in mainstream production — at some point, and with a lot of development alterations in the meantime, probably. — SoyaCincau
