14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung is preparing to launch a foldable phone in 2018, which would completely revolutionize the market and start a major paradigm change.
Even if phones seem to undergo an apparent evolution, the rate of their development is a slow one. It’s difficult to pinpoint any moment in time when one generation of smartphones was really different from the previous one. Some example could be the launch of the first iPhone or the launch of a curved phone.
In any case, the market never had a proper shakeup, and Samsung is preparing for just that. The companies’ president, Koh Dong-Jin, recently disclosed the fact that we’ll finally get to see a foldable Samsung in 2018.
Foldable displays have been around for a long time
The fact that foldable displays exist for a long time can be puzzling. Why hasn’t anyone used them until now? Like most new technologies, it’s a matter of supply, development, and overall usability.
It’s nice to see them at expositions, but making a million of them for mass production is not easy. We have established a roadmap for foldable smartphones, and our goal is to release them in 2018. We are currently working on few problems, and we will release the products once we solve these problems,” said Koh Dong-Jin during a Galaxy Note 8 event, according to etnews.com.
No other details have been made available, except for the folding direction, which is inward. It’s also not clear where will this phone be placed in the current market, although given the exceptional nature of a foldable device it will be probably an expensive one.
Furthermore, it would also force other companies to finally go this route. It’s also quite possible that Samsung own many of the patents necessary for foldable displays, so they might be the only ones to have them on the market.