Samsung’s long-rumoured Galaxy X foldable phone that is expected to be unveiled early in the next year has leaked. As the Korean Intellectual Property Office received the design of the phone. The design has been uncovered by LetsGoDigital.
However It is not confirmed if this is the final design for the phone or not, because Samsung possess authority to submit anything for patent protection. But one thing seems logical that the final SM-G888 would look something like these ketches.
The idea about the phone is that it contains a hinge, bendable display and operates much like any other existing smartphone.
The rumours also say that this phone will get launched before the Galaxy S9. That might mean it is introduced at CES, or the device’s unveiling could be expected by Samsung at MWC in Barcelona. Either way, the goal is likely to be to have it on the market before the S9 appears at later, yearly, Unpacked event of Samsung.
It seems that the goal for Samsung is to get back the much-loved flip phone design which had been popular before smartphone roared onto the scene with fancy touchscreens. If Samsung makes a phone with decent screen real estate having ability to get folded in half, it would be attracting a lot of attention, and could well appeal to people getting modern phones are to be big.
The design is much interesting with a screen on the inside, and a hinge that allows the phone to fold open. The idea, is that it will operate like any existing smartphone. The screen, if Samsung makes the design to work, should be a single OLED panel. As have been pointed out before, Samsung has been working on this technology for basically a decade.
Anyway, OLEDs have always had some flexibility, that is why they have been used on LG’s G Flex phones, which you could have bended a small amount and Samsung’s curved edge devices. The problem, though seems to be big is not so much developing a screen that bends, but making it so that it could bent hundreds of thousands of times without breaking, or getting the screen quality spoiled.
And definitely, the hinge supporting the folding needs to be a pretty clever piece of design too. A snap hinge would not work, because you can not “crease” an OLED, instead of all this, it needs keeping a curve to the screen to prevent it from getting damaged.
It is tough to tell how this will be working out for Samsung. Much like current rumoured supply of Apple woes with the iPhone X, the more complexity you build in, and the more modern the technology is, the more troublesome is the production process.
Both Samsung and Apple do know everything about this, with both firms having eaten a lot of expenses in the previous years to develop the other new devices. The Galaxy S6 Edge had been rumoured to have cost Samsung a lot more than the S6 for building. It had been suggested that at the point that Samsung would much rather have had people buying the flat S6, on which they did make a lot more profit.
