Samsung Wants To Bring Back the Flip Phone With Bendable Screens

redletterdave writes: A new patent filed last April but published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office earlier this month suggests Samsung might be working on a smartphone that can bend in half like a flip phone. The biggest problem, according to the patent, is all the strain that accumulates by continually folding the display, or keeping the display folded for a long period of time, which can result in deformations and imperfections, Samsung notes. But Samsung's patent also describes how the phone could keep track of how long it's been in the folded and unfolded states, so as to alert the user of any strain that needs to be relieved. This could help extend the lifetime of the phone and its display.

Comments

Re:"This could help extend the lifetime of the pho

[The-Ixian]

This assumes some kind of software controlled physical locking mechanism wouldn't it?

Not really sure how useful a physical locking mechanism would be on such a small device... It makes me think of the little lock on children's diaries... utterly pointless against a determined attacker with physical access.

If Samsung wanted to enforce obsolescence in a dastardly way, it could do it a lot easier by simply bricking the phone through a software mechanism.