Rumors about Samsung developing a foldable smartphone have just received a major boost thanks to a new report out of South Korea. The manufacturer is apparently planning to mass produce bendable displays by the end of the year and release foldable handsets later on in 2017.
According to ETNews, the device is set to have a 5-inch screen when folded. This will transform into a 7-inch display when unfolded. The OLED panel would thus function as a wallet-like smartphone and tablet, an intriguing concept. It’s still at the prototype stage as of now, with the report claiming that Samsung has a few tasks left before it can hit commercial availability.
Samsung has supposedly partnered with a number of foreign and domestic to develop its foldable offering. Rumors assert that the company has been hard at work on such devices for the past 3 years in order to combat the worldwide slowdown in phone sales. The industry sees the innovation as the next big technology shake-up, the way touch-enabled smartphones were.
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If the speculation is accurate, the arrival of the device would certainly inject the business with some badly-needed momentum. The last handset to offer anything original was the LG G5 and its modular design. Samsung has been stuck in a style rut for some time now, churning out the same basic look across a number of different models.
Samsung has filed a number of patents for a foldable offering over the past few years. The device goes by the codename Project Valley among insiders. There were even rumors that it would launch the phone at the beginning of 2016, though this has obviously not come to pass. It’s apparently blessing the phone with 3GB of RAM and either a Snapdragon 620 or 820 processor.
We’ll keep you updated as and when more details about Samsung’s foldable smartphone emerge out of the woodwork.