Samsung’s first foldable smartphone expected to launch early next year will likely look something like the illustrations seen in the gallery below, with the images themselves being pulled from one of the company’s most recently awarded design patents that looks largely in line with the most credible report about the upcoming handset to date – the one published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. The three sketches appear to be a perfect visualization of the device that industry sources recently claimed features a “small display bar” when folded, with its overall design effectively being an evolution of the flip phone concept.
Samsung will still be using a hinge in order to make its upcoming device work but unlike the ZTE Axon M launched last year, the new handset will be equipped with a single OLED screen, the patent documentation suggests. The display strip sticking out of the smartphone when it’s folded is also meant to be hidden when the device is working in tablet mode, i.e. is completely open, with Samsung apparently resolving to turn it off in that scenario. As the Galaxy X or however the company’s first foldable phone ends up being called will use an OLED panel, it should be able to effectively hide any portion of its display given how such modules can have individual pixels turned off. Samsung’s patent submitted with the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2016 and published last Wednesday also describes the device seen here used in conjunction with an S Pen.
Samsung may choose to bundle the device with a stylus due to its overall size, with recent reports pointing to a product with a screen measuring around seven inches in diagonal, though its aspect ratio appears to be on the slim side, in the ballpark of 20:9. The South Korean technology giant may announce its first bendable handset as soon as Las Vegas-based Consumer Electronics Show 2019 starts in January.
