xda: Samsung Files a Patent in Korea for a Foldable Phone Concept

jeudi 26 octobre 2017

Samsung Files a Patent in Korea for a Foldable Phone Concept

Some say that innovation within the smartphone industry has stagnated for a while even though cameras are sharper, bezels are slimmer, displays are denser and performance is better than ever before. Still, we see so many futuristic ideas from movies and TV shows that many are looking for the next new thing. Some companies, including Samsung and Lenovo, feel that foldable smartphones and tablets could be a trend we’ll be seeing in the future and a new patent filed by Samsung Electronics shows us a concept phone that they’ve been thinking about.

The idea of a foldable smartphone sounds really nice but it’s the mechanics of implementing such a feature that is the big hurdle right now. Companies like Samsung and LG have showed off their bendable and sometimes rollable displays as they inch closer to that goal. We even had ZTE recently show off their first attempt with the Axon M. While ZTE approached the idea differently (by having two separate display panels), others want to offer a more seamless design.

For the last two years Lenovo has showed off their foldable tablet concept that the company’s Lenovo Tech World conference. They also have a bendable phone concept that lets you wrap an extra long phone around your wrist when you aren’t talking on it. Samsung has been very vocal about their ambitions with the idea too and have even produced a few mock up images that show what the future of smartphones and tablets could look like.

Earlier this week the company submitted a patent in Korea for a foldable smartphone concept, featuring a hinge that looks incredibly similar to what Microsoft is using on the Surface Book. Whether or not this will be the device that is scheduled for release in 2018 under the Galaxy Note brand, that’s still up for debate, but it shows that they are looking into a number of ways to pull it off. You can find the PDF for the patent application here and we are including a number of images pulled from it, down below.