Foldable screens, rolling displays: what will our future smartphones look like?

The first idea is a prototype of a smartphone with a tri-fold screen, i.e., with a double folding system, both inwards and outwards. — AFP Relaxnews

At SID Display Week 2022, the world's largest conference dedicated to displays, held in San Jose, California last week, the two South Korean tech giants Samsung and LG caused a stir with their presentation of revolutionary foldable screens that could, in the coming years, be used on new high-end smartphones.

Last year, Samsung generated headlines with the release of the Galaxy Z Fold3 and Flip3. While sales figures have not yet been made public, Samsung has revealed that it increased its sales of folding smartphones fourfold between 2020 and 2021. However, their prices, above a thousand US dollars, still make them a niche market.

And it appears that the South Korean manufacturer wants to continue experimenting with other formats in the future. The manufacturer unveiled two new technologies designed to make life easier for customers in a few years' time in the form of screens that can be folded in three or that slide.

The first idea is a prototype of a smartphone with a tri-fold screen, i.e., with a double folding system, both inwards and outwards. The brand's other idea is to develop "expandable" screens, capable of unfolding and then retracting horizontally or vertically.

However, Samsung is not the first to propose this type of concept, which, for the moment, has not yet made its way to a product on the market.

Meanwhile, Samsung's main competitor LG is also looking at new display styles, with its presentation of an 8-inch touch screen that can fold inwards or outwards and a 17-inch foldable screen for PCs. The latter should soon be used by Asus.

Such technologies could of course also be used in the future for other devices, such as game consoles, car dashboard displays or TV sets. – AFP Relaxnews