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Samsung Is Working On Two More Foldable Smartphones (bloomberg.com)
Samsung is working on a pair of new foldable smartphones to follow its Galaxy Fold, a smartphone with dual screens that fold in half like a notebook, and another that works just like any other. Bloomberg reports: The South Korean manufacturer is said to be developing a clamshell-like device, and another that folds away from the user similar to Huawei's Mate X, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing internal plans. The $1,980 Galaxy Fold that Samsung plans to release in April folds inward like a notebook. While it's still too early to gauge how much demand there will be for smartphones with flexible screens, Samsung and other rivals are eager to gain an edge over Apple Inc. in the $495 billion industry, especially amid cooling sales.
Samsung plans to unveil the vertically folding phone late this year or early next year, and is using mock-ups to fine-tune the design, the people said. The gadget is designed with an extra screen on the outside, but the manufacturer may remove it depending on how customers respond to a similar display on the Galaxy Fold, they said. The outfolding device, which already exists as a prototype after being considered as Samsung's first foldable gadget, will roll out afterward, the people said. It will be thinner because it has no extra screen, they said. Samsung may also incorporate an in-display fingerprint sensor for its foldable lineup, as it did for the Galaxy S10 model announced last month, they said. The report also touched on the Galaxy Fold's screen imperfection. Apparently, a crease "appears on the panel after it's been folded about 10,000 times, and Samsung is considering offering free screen replacements after releasing the product."
"The Galaxy Fold's screen imperfection develops on a protective film covering the touch sensor bonded with the display underneath," the report adds. "That's one reason why Samsung kept the phone inside a glass case at MWC in Barcelona last month."
Samsung plans to unveil the vertically folding phone late this year or early next year, and is using mock-ups to fine-tune the design, the people said. The gadget is designed with an extra screen on the outside, but the manufacturer may remove it depending on how customers respond to a similar display on the Galaxy Fold, they said. The outfolding device, which already exists as a prototype after being considered as Samsung's first foldable gadget, will roll out afterward, the people said. It will be thinner because it has no extra screen, they said. Samsung may also incorporate an in-display fingerprint sensor for its foldable lineup, as it did for the Galaxy S10 model announced last month, they said. The report also touched on the Galaxy Fold's screen imperfection. Apparently, a crease "appears on the panel after it's been folded about 10,000 times, and Samsung is considering offering free screen replacements after releasing the product."
"The Galaxy Fold's screen imperfection develops on a protective film covering the touch sensor bonded with the display underneath," the report adds. "That's one reason why Samsung kept the phone inside a glass case at MWC in Barcelona last month."
Hopefully, they will make a decent product at a reasonable price, this time around. Nah.
they might look like a taco and creimer will eat them
then he will post a fifteen page monument to his ego about how he has a dedicated band of trolls and how he single-handedly told slashdot management what to do
Filed under things no one ever wanted...
SHINY SHINY MUST BUY NOW
Company on a yearly cycle is already planning next years devices.
If they can do one, doing more isn't news, it advertising.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I am now bored by folding phones, how about you also make the folding and non-folding phones interlockable so they act as one giant display of arbitrary shape and size?
That way you and a few friends can combine your displays to watch movies, or play games.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Until then... fuc off :)
[($)]
....there's always a "but".
But they'll cost too much, prices I'm seeing are on the order of $2K, give or take. I just can't see spending that much on a phone.
Maybe someday, but not until they reach a sane price point (for me, at least).
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Millions of cobsumers don't want a thin, fragile phablet, they want a small, thick, solid phone.
But the manufacturers wont oblige.
WHY NOT ?!
I'm mesmerized by Avatar / Geostorm tablet foldouts from what start off as oversized pens. I'll buy a working one of those for $2k.
More overpriced, scratchy, creasy plastic devices looking around desperately for a problem to solve.
Despite needing to advance the "soft foldable film as a screen" technology a bit further, there a few show stoppers for a penblet:
1. power consumption:
we're used to have smartphone packing "almost humorously"-oversized computing power (at the end of the day: just to run all the stupid trackers in the webpages, in the apps, and in the core service / OS)
But there's a limit of how much you can miniaturize batteries to power these "micro-HPC-in-a-pocket".
To pack into a "fat oversized pen"
- you're either back to the era of smartphone such as Palm Pre (One of the first smartphone with true multi-tasking (thanks to full blown GNU/Linux) - a significant bit under-powered with regards to what it tries to achieve, just to avoid killing the battery in a seconds)
- or back at the era of the first iPhones (what do you mean a phone should hold charge more than 3 hours?) and/or first generation portable gaming consoles with color LCD (I eat batteries like candy ).
2. heat disspiation
All this power has to go somewhere. Less surface = less heat disspiation. If one of the ad-tracker goes crazy, your penblet is going to cook you and burn a hole in your shirt pocket.
---
These two blocker has a few possible evolution to get better :
- advancing fab tech (7nm chipsets in the phone for more power efficience / less heat generation)
- remote offloading of computation / generation of content (the way Siri/Cortana/Echo/OkGoogle all run on their respective companies' servers. Think also SteamLink,etc) so the heat generation/power consumption happens elsewhere.
- personnal area network : the computation is still remote, but the remote is big brick in you back pack/hand bag (think relationship between Google Glasses and smartphone, or VR headset and blet-clip puck computers). Could also double as a battery extender (think like current case of earphones charging them)
- dockable device: goes into high power mode only when docked to the charger. But that defeats the advantage and space saving that the fully-rollable screen of a penblet would bring.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
And we complained about bending iPhones, now we are having foldable smartphones. Actually it was Apples's transition step.
I cannot understand why one would even want one of these things.
Ok at this point I think we can say unequivocally that we've reached peak phone. They keep cramming more and more useless crap onto phones, at the expense of actual usable features.
I don't need a stupid folding display.
I don't need moronic AI-powered animated poop emojis.
I don't need visually jarring display contortions like holes and notches.
I don't need a phone so thin I can slice vegetables
I need a phone that can go for more than 1 (or maybe 2 if you're lucky) days on a charge.
I need a phone with the headphone jack back because it's the only mostly universal port that works consistently (more or less) from one device to the next.
I need a phone that is works in favor of my privacy instead of treating my personal life as a revenue stream.
I need a phone that is properly supported for more than 2 years at best.
Unfortunately it appears that I'm in the minority, otherwise we'd have all this by now.
One very hot day this summer season, I located myself uptown, close to an H&M and perilously near a Best Buy. For motives I cannot absolutely recognise, those shops are my downfall. I buy apparel with an urgency befitting someone who is photographed each day by way of hordes of paparazzi, as though I can’t be visible in public sporting the identical clothes extra than as soon as. At H&M, I offered a romper. At Best Buy, I stood in front of the cellular phone cowl show for what felt like an hour, assessment shopping on my smartphone at the same time as texting my favored sounding board—my youngest sister, a level-headed saint who answers my panicked texts about whether or not I can spend the cash and must spend the money every single time. I wanted a custom phone cases that would truely guard my cellphone from the multiple drops it encounters every single day. An Otterbox turned into hideous and cumbersome and extraordinarily high-priced; a thin, chic case of rubber and no longer plenty else turned into impractical. I settled on some thing that felt protective enough—a plastic element and a rubber component!—and seemed excellent. Before shopping it, I briefly remembered that I had at the least three others at domestic. I pushed that thought of my head, passed over my debit card and left. Tech gadgets and the like constantly entice me, too. A night wasted at the internet always convinces me that I need a new mouse or an ergonomic something or different, or maybe a WiFI extender for the terrible net in my residence. Every time I pass into this kind of stores, I go away with something new.