Samsung and Lenovo are working on flexible smartphones that could make it into the market by the end of this year.
For the last decade or so, innovations in smartphones have largely incremental -- upgrades like a better camera, higher-capacity batteries, sharper screens fingerprint scanner and the like. The changes under the hood have been prevalent, but the candy bar form factor has been pervasive across pretty much every smartphone manufacturers out there, across price ranges and capabilities.
That may soon change: rumours about a new Samsung smartphone that is flexible are starting to trickle in. According to a report in The Korea Herald, Samsung could possibly announce its latest innovation by the third quarter of 2017: a foldable smartphone.
Sources close to the organization said, “Samsung is expected to roll out more than 100,000 units of fold-out devices in the third quarter.”
The rumours also suggest that Samsung’s new foldable smartphone -- codenamed Project Valley -- will carry the “S8” suffix and most likely a 7-inch display. The rumour mill also suggested that the company is likely to launch a mobile phone with a two displays: the screens will be located on the front and back of the device.
Samsung is not the only manufacturer toying with the idea of bendable smartphones. Rival Lenovo has been developing its own flexible smartphone for the last three years and rumors indicate that the company may launch over 100,000 of these devices in the fourth quarter of 2017.
The news of Lenovo’s bendable device come after the mobile was demoed at their homegrown event -- Lenovo Tech World -- in June 2016. There was plenty of buzz around the device during the time, which was famously flaunted by Meghan McCarthy in a video showing her wrapping it around her wrist.
There is also report about FlexPhone, a flexible Android smartphone being developed by Royole Corporation based in the US. Currently in its prototype stage, the smartphone can purportedly double as a fitness tracker by wrapping it around the wearer’s wrist. The smartphone will reportedly weigh about 100 gram and will be around six millimetre thick.
Even Apple may be readying itself to enter the foldable smartphone market foray -- the company has already filed a patent for a flexible display earlier this year although it isn’t certain whether it would be implemented in a phone or in another of their devices.
Either way, flexible gadgets do appear to be on the horizon.
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