Samsung showed a preview of its highly anticipated new folding screen device at an event held on Wednesday, November 7 in San Francisco, United States. It is a sort of middle ground between a smartphone and a tablet, with a folding system to be able to use a larger internal screen or an external one, smaller and similar to that of classic smartphones. While there has been talk of foldable screens for a long time, so far their popularity has been low due to some technological limitations, which Samsung now seems to have managed to overcome.
For the demonstration, Samsung has hidden its new “Infinity Flex Display” inside a rather bulky enclosure, saying it wants to protect its prototype while waiting to present the final product. The demonstration lasted a few minutes and was led by Justin Denison, one of the company's vice presidents in the United States. The stage lights have been dimmed and some backlighting has been created to further hide the device.
The smartphone that also acts as a tablet, or vice versa, looks like a classic mobile phone with a touchscreen when closed. From the left side it opens like a book, detecting a display folded in on itself, which extends to offer a much larger screen comparable to that of a small-medium sized tablet. The system uses Android, which just a few days ago announced that it had added some options to manage foldable screens.
During a more technical presentation, Samsung then revealed some more information about its device. The smaller screen has a resolution of 840 × 1960 pixels, while the internal one reaches 1536 × 2152 pixels when opened. The first is approximately 4.5 inches, while the second 7.3 inches (for comparison, an iPad mini has a 7.9-inch screen).
Aside from this information, Samsung hasn't given many other details about its new device. We know that it will be able to run multiple applications on both screens at the same time, as long as the app makers work together to adapt their services for this purpose. News and content aggregator Flipboard has announced that it is already working on a version of its app suitable for the booklet format. Samsung is one of the largest smartphone makers in the world, so it has the means and resources to persuade other developers to make versions of their apps suitable for the new device.
The state of development of the Infinity Flex Display seems to be almost finished and should be close to its mass production. Samsung has said it will launch over the next year, but has not disclosed specific dates. The foldable screens are starting to arouse great interest among smartphone makers, who are speeding up their development work to get ahead of their competitors. In addition to Samsung, almost all manufacturers such as Xiaomi, LG and Lenovo work on projects of this type. Microsoft, which makes the Surface, is also exploring the possibility of creating a new type of tablet that becomes pocketable.
