Samsung presents the future of folding and sliding smartphones

After televisions, monitors, and classic smartphones, Samsung is working to present new folding smartphones at CES 2022. If the brand is mainly known for its models Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy Z Fold, Samsung does not count s’ stop in such good way and foresee more models in the future, some of which are on the border between the folding and sliding screen, and even rollable.

Unparalleled flexibility OLED panels

As always with Samsung, the company is not limited to the field of smartphones and also presents concepts much more varied, larger, and whose usefulness will not be the same for everyone. We start with two smartphone concepts, embedding OLED Flex G panels, to form a three-sided screen. In addition to being able to fold inwards, they can also go outwards, and therefore rest on a single screen as the illustration below. This therefore allows the smartphone to stabilize itself.

The second prototype looks more like a tablet, with an OLED Flex S panel. It can also turn inwards or outwards, still in three parts. All of these concepts are, according to the brand, easy to transport and useful in many situations. In the same style, there is a third screen, which is foldable only in the middle, and which ultimately looks like a fully tactile laptop.

It seems that the brand has also presented a concept of sliding smartphone. With smaller dimensions than the Z Fold, this device saves space by storing the second screen “inside” the first, while it can be unfolded at any time to take advantage of a slight surplus. , not negligible for certain activities.

New smartphones soon?

In the category of folding screens, we also find those that will be used to give a circular shape, or very curved, which we simply call flexible screens. We can easily imagine these on large cylindrical advertising panels, for example. The model presented by Samsung is much smaller than that, and features the Flex Note panel. This has the particularity of not distorting the diffused image.

Of course, all of these concepts don’t mean that in a year, or less, Samsung will be releasing products that take advantage of it. On the one hand, it simply means that these screens could be used by other brands, to whom Samsung resells them as it is used to doing. On the other hand, it proves that the manufacturer is experimenting, presenting what it is possible to do, to perhaps go even further than what is presented to us today.

That said, we can still expect some of these technologies to reach us in the next few years, as the folding smartphone market begins to gain more and more brands. Will Samsung prefer to withdraw to explore other areas, or strengthen its leadership position with new models?