Samsung’s range of folding smartphones has hit a wall when it comes to design. Each iteration of the Fold and Flip series seems only grudgingly incremented. Whether this is a lack of imagination or a limitation on what can be done with a smartphone (it’s not a lack of imagination), the result is the same.
Or is it? Samsung has been confirmed to be working on something a little different for its folding smartphone lineup. A so-called “double-folding” smartphone is in development at the company, according to executive Chung Yi.
Samsung doubles up
Yi was speaking at last week’s International Meeting of Information Display (IMID) conference, a keynote speech titled ‘Everlasting Evolution of Display with AI’. The smartphone with an additional fold (Xiaomi is working on something similar) isn’t the only new form factor the South Korean giant is fiddling with, though it’s the most likely to see an eventual release.
The other idea, apart from multi-folding screens, is a rollable smartphone. You might remember that this was the last really innovative thing that LG announced right before they quit smartphones, depriving us of the chance to see what might have been. If the company had only hung on, it might have come out ahead of the competition.
As it is, Samsung has already demonstrated a rollable smartphone screen, though it has yet to put it into production. Folding screens are already several generations old, meaning that adding an extra fold is just a matter of expanding screen sizes (and price tags). Releasing something that rolls out into a larger display carries the same risks that folding smartphones did in their infancy. It may take some time before that risk becomes acceptable to the industry’s players.