Samsung Galaxy X foldable phone preview

Описание: Samsung Galaxy X foldable phone preview
UPDATE 15/03: Arriving at IFA? Here's what Samsung wants to put in your pocket next
Flip phones ruled the mobile world until smartphones took over with their touchscreen slabs. However, we might soon be folding our phones in half again – if Samsung has its way.

Foldable smartphones are coming, and as with the curved screens of the Galaxy Note Edge and Galaxy S6 Edge, Samsung appears to be leading the charge. For a couple years now, the company has been sharing concepts of foldable and rollable smartphones, and now a flurry of patent applications and rumours suggest the first models are coming very soon.

Samsung intends to make fully functional smartphones with flexible displays that allow you to fold the phone shut and tuck it in your pocket – and maybe even phones that open up to reveal a full-sized tablet screen within, or touchscreen devices that roll out of a tube.

Sound crazy? Maybe. Seem expensive? Undoubtedly. Is it exciting? Absolutely. Here's everything we know about the so-called Galaxy X phones so far.

SETTING THE TABLE

What you might not realise is that Samsung has been quietly preparing us for this future for the past several years. Back in 2011, Samsung released a concept video that showed a flexible AMOLED phone that's little more than a technological piece of translucent paper: much more advanced than what's actually coming anytime soon, but a truly inspired creative spark all the same.

Much more realistic is the above video that shows a smartphone that opens up to become a tablet – or rather, a tablet that folds in half to reveal a smartphone on the outside. However you choose to frame it, we've heard that idea come up again in a recent report, so it might be pretty close to the real thing.

We suspect that Samsung has been waiting for the tech to match its ambitions, and that time appears soon: in early 2015, a Samsung Display representative said that "the commercialisation of foldable smartphones will be possible in 2016." However, it sounds like 2017 is more likely at this point.

Indeed, Samsung is apparently so far advanced with its plans that it was showing off the new phone behind closed doors at this year's Mobile World Congress. It was a prototype, admittedly, but the investors and mobile operators that saw it were reportedly "very impressed" with the concept.

The wallet phone
From the outside, in its fully open and extended state, the Galaxy X phone should look pretty similar to a typical Samsung flagship phone: it has one large touchscreen on the front, cameras on both sides, and a home button below the display. It's a smartphone.

Only this smartphone does something quite surprising: as the recent patent application illustration shows (via Patently Mobile), the phone can fold right in half, fully covering the screen and making the phone about half its normal size. That makes it more pocket-friendly, plus it keeps the display nicely ensconced within the shell.