Later today we’ll be drowning in details of Samsung’s current set of upcoming devices but the South Korean company has much more ambition than just a better screen, processor and camera for all of us. The future of Samsung lies… well, with a better screen but it’s something out of science fiction.

That’s the plan, anyway. Patently Mobile have located a Samsung patent that was filed for back in the mists of 2014, thought its eventual implementation might not take place for some time. That’s because Samsung is hoping to put holographic images into your pocket – in a limited way, at the very least.

Samsung’s patent describes a way to have a screen emit a hologram, of the sort we’ve been hoping to see every since Douglas Quaid went running around Mars looking for his memory. Sort of, anyway. Samsung is looking at a way to create static images rather than an animated holographic broadcast but even this limited projection would be quite an achievement. Especially if it was built into a smartphone.

But this is a patent application rather than an in-development tech announcement so there’s no telling when Samsung is hoping to bring something like this to market. Our hope is obviously sooner rather than later but often companies will just patent a good idea in case the technology comes along to create it one day. Given the surging popularity of VR and augmented reality, we’d have to say that Samsung will probably be putting some effort into this one.

Source: Patently Mobile