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A new Samsung patent has given us our first glimpse of the foldable display smartphone which could hit the markets in early or mid-2015. You can find this by looking for patent No. US201401119540 over at the USPTO. Unlike the curved display smartphones that we saw last year from Samsung and LG respectively, this will be completely flexible, almost like a wallet.
We’re still far away from seeing one of these devices hit the market, so we can only speculate at this point. However, this patent filing gives us a brief idea of where Samsung is headed.
One potential possibility is that a large screen device like a tablet could be easily converted into a smartphone using this technology. That’s possibly the only way these displays could be put to good use. The patent filing reveals something similar as we see the device being folded on both sides with an external shell keeping the shape intact.
The Samsung Galaxy Round from October last year utilized a partially curved AMOLED display, which is completely different from what we’re seeing here.
The Korean manufacturer is expected to ramp up production of its flexible display panels by investing upwards of $1.2 billion in a new production plant. This unit is expected to start production of the panels by the end of 2014, which indicates that devices with the display should hit the markets by early 2015.
[Via Phandroid]
