Samsung’s foldable display
Highly anticipated technology appears on stage
Pundits love to proclaim that Apple no longer innovates – and Samsung
wants to keep that topic hot. That’s because it has just unveiled the tech – dubbed the Infinity Flex Display – that it is planning to use in a future folding phone.
The idea behind the display is that you can unfold the device from a smartphone into a tablet. When folded, you use the screen on the front; once it’s unfolded, there is a wider, flexible display on the inside.
It’s an interesting concept, and one that Samsung believes will create “entirely new ways of using the smartphone”. Any such design would have to be tough enough to withstand thousands of folding actions over the lifespan of the device, while remaining thin and light enough to fit into your pocket. On that point, Samsung says the display can be folded “hundreds of thousands of times”.
Samsung appeared coy about showing the device in full – most of the images were illustrations or renders. When the actual device appeared, it was only shown in dark lighting and not in great detail – “disguised”, according to the Samsung presenter.
One UI
Alongside the foldable display, Samsung revealed One UI, its take on the operating system that would run on the device. Samsung explained it was designed to make one-handed use easier, with “the most relevant content on the bottom half of the screen”. In an apparent attempt to one-up Apple’s Split View, One UI can also run three apps simultaneously.