Samsung already has more foldable phones on the market than any other company, with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 (along with their predecessors), but it appears that this is only the beginning, with other models and form factors in the pipeline, wrote the news platform TechRadar
The company has launched a website highlighting various different uses for flexible OLED screens, including a ‘Slidable Flex’ design that appears to be a flat display that can be extended by pulling the edges, and a ‘Rollable Flex’ screen that can unfurl from a tube, in addition to the designs we’ve seen so far.
The microsite appears to have been created solely to showcase the company’s cutting-edge display technology. The ‘Flex OLED’ page within it hints that Samsung may be diversifying into a wider range of displays in the near future, offering a variety of aspect ratios and folding in a variety of ways. The company’s present portfolio consists of the Galaxy Z Fold and Flip devices, although this could change in the near future.
It’s worth noting that Samsung hasn’t verified that any of these designs are in the works — they’re just conceivable applications of the company’s flexible OLED panel technology. Nonetheless, the fact that they’ve been shown here shows that they’re being considered by the organization.
Samsung’s Ultra-Thin Glass technology has been enhanced with better durability, with the potential to resist 100 folds each day or five years of continuous use. The toughness of UTG has even been said to be comparable to that of genuine glass, though this has yet to be proven.
Samsung isn’t the only manufacturer experimenting with rollable phones; we’ve seen rollable phone prototypes from TCL and even had our hands on the rollable Oppo X 2021.
Before abruptly abandoning the smartphone business, LG reportedly came extremely close to releasing one (named the LG Rollable). So it appears that rollable phones are the next stage in smartphone design, and Samsung appears to have some competition in the space, but it’s unclear when we’ll be able to buy one.