Samsung Patents Foldable Smartphone

There have been rumours that Samsung are working on making a phone with a foldable display for quite a while now, but a new patent application from the tech giant that has been discovered recently describes just that, a smartphone that folds in the middle.

The device has been dubbed the Galaxy X and is rumoured to be launching at some point in 2017.

The patent application was originally filed back in April but has only just recently been uncovered. The patent reveals a number of renders and illustrations of what the smartphone could look like, check out the images below:

The smartphone is shown to have a bendable hinge in the middle of the device that enables it to be folded in half.

Interestingly, the device appears to be curved from top to bottom and is able to be propped upright so you can view videos, etc on the top half of the screen (see image below).

The patent application is in Korean and you can download it here.

There is a lot of speculation that Samsung are planning to release a foldable phone at the Mobile World Congress event in February 2017, and that they are building two new smartphone models. The first being a smartphone that folds like a wallet, and the second being a device with a 5 inch display that can be rolled out to an 8 inch display.

At this time, we know that Samsung have been working on bendy screens for several years, and that they are possible so it isn’t much of a stretch to believe it could be in shops soon.  

However, just because these devices have been patented, doesn’t necessarily mean Samsung will build and release them to the public. Although with the amount of rumours and patents building up it wouldn’t surprise us if Samsung were planning on releasing a foldable device in the near future.