Samsung’s new “infinity flex display” foldable phone can run 3 apps at once
There's still no confirmation on exact naming, pricing or precise specifications, but Samsung has finally started showing off its foldable phone of the future.
At its Samsung Developer Conference today, Samsung took the wrapper off its foldable phone concept... sort of. It wasn't a phone launch, because as the name suggests, the Samsung Developer Conference is a conference for developers, but instead it talked up its developments in a foldable phone using what it's calling the "infinity flex display".
There's not a lot of detail around the eventual phone that will use the infinity flex display, beyond the fact that it will feature a design that folds out to reveal a 7.3 inch display capable of running up to 3 Android apps simultaneously. Samsung says that it's working on "a new user experience" to make the most of the infinity flex display's variable form factor, with "seamless" transitions from the smaller external display when folded to the larger tablet-style display when fully opened.
Samsung refers to the infinity flex display as the "blueprint for the future development of mobile display", which rather leaves up in the air when we might actually see Samsung phones with the technology onboard. It's not that long ago that it launched the Samsung Galaxy Note9, so a release of a third phone (following the Samsung Galaxy S9 back at MWC earlier this year) in 2018 was always unlikely.
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Samsung Galaxy S9
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It's already widely tipped that we'll see the Samsung Galaxy S10 series at or around Mobile World Congress 2019, but that doesn't seem to be a foldable handset based on early rumours.
Samsung isn't alone in the folding phone space, with Huawei said to be working on a phone that it claimed it would release before the end of 2018, although it's been rather quiet on that score recently. They have both been technically beaten to reveal by the Royole FlexPai 7.8 inch phone, pictured below, which will sell in China for around US$1,300. Royole's device is said to be functional but rudimentary. Given Samsung's premium status in the mobile space, it's fair to assume it will debut something a little more fancy as and when it does finally bring a flexible phone to the market.
