Samsung is Really Going to Release a Phone With a Foldable OLED Display This Year

Samsung released its Q4 2017 earnings last night and they showed record profits. They crushed it in chips (memory, for example), but the mobile division performed well too, thanks to the Galaxy Note 8. Since none of us really care about earnings reports, let’s talk about another bit of info that came out of the report: confirmation of a 2018 phone with a foldable OLED display.

Samsung didn’t name-drop the upcoming phone or even tell us when exactly to expect it, but they mentioned twice that they have display panels that are foldable on the horizon and they’ll be used this year. Specifically, Samsung said that in their mobile business, they plan to differentiate smartphones by adopting “cutting-edge technologies, such as foldable OLED displays.” And again, this will happen in 2018.

Galaxy X rumors and specs

So far, the few rumors we’ve seen in reference to a Samsung phone with a foldable display are for the Galaxy X. And while I’d love to give you a whole bunch of concrete details surrounding it, there isn’t much other than a bunch of SEO spam from news outlets trying to cash in early without any actual info to provide. The one article we do have came out of ETNews in Korea, which states that Samsung has entered into a “mass-production phase” for foldable phones and that they should have them done in November, after developing and producing foldable OLED panels from March through September. They believe the foldable Samsung OLED phones will sport 7.3-inch flexible OLED panels when unfolded. A mock-up below should give you a better visual for how this might work.

The early thoughts of a foldable phone, at least to me, didn’t grab my attention, largely because I assumed the implementation would be garbage and more of a gimmick than usable. However, if the phone ends up being like the image above, I could get excited pretty quickly. Being able to compact a phone down for storage, only to open up to a big beautiful display while using isn’t a terrible idea. Now, if Samsung can also toss another display on the backside for use when the phone is folded, I’d really be down.

Thoughts?

// Samsung | ETNews | LetsGo Digital IMAGE