Foldable phones are coming – it’s only a matter of time – and it's looking increasingly like Samsung could be the first company to commercially launch one, possibly as soon as this year.
We may even know what it’s called, with the mysterious Samsung Galaxy X being the subject of several bendable leaks, foldable patents and flexible rumors.
But whether X marks the spot or not, we’re clearly entering a foldable future. To see how we got here and where we’re going, here’s the story of Samsung’s foldable phone so far.
The idea of a foldable phone isn’t new to Samsung, in fact way back in 2011 the company showed off a prototype of exactly that.
The device looked chunky and awkward, but even back then it somewhat worked, remaining intact after 100,000 folds, with only a 6% drop in brightness at the center, where all the folding action happened.
This clearly wasn’t a commercial product, but later that year Samsung launched a concept video of a fully bendable (and transparent) mobile device, that could fold out from a phone-sized screen to a tablet-sized one, showing Samsung's ambitions for the technology.
Samsung appears all set to launch the Galaxy X, the smartphone with a foldable display. Samsung's plans to launch a foldable smartphone have been rumoured for years, and the company confirmed it had plans to launch it in 2018. While the tech world has been anticipating a foldable smartphone from Samsung for a long time, the South Korean giant is now said to be ready for the mass production of foldable OLED panels. While a new report out of South Korea claims to reveal the plans by Samsung Display, it does not indicate the exact device where the OLED panels will be used. However, rumours mills suggest that they could be used in the upcoming Galaxy X, said to get launched next year.!
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