Flexible Phone: Samsung Presents Infinity Flex Display

Samsung’s foldable Infinity Flex phone unveil in 13 minutes [Video]

Video uploaded by Engadget on November 7, 2018

Flexible Phone: Samsung’s New Smartphone with Infinity Flex Display

On November 7, 2018, Samsung unveiled the smartphone the geek community had been waiting for since 2013. Back then, a flexible phone commercial first aired and the users gasped. At last, several days ago, Samsung rolled out the foldable smartphone that features the Infinity Flex Display. Can you see the difference? The AMOLED matrix can be as flexible as one desires, but the phone is NOT — it can’t twist and roll, it can only fold in half!

Flexible screens are no wonder nowadays. Even the never-before-heard-of Chinese Royole managed to find some for their FlexPai. Logic boards can now be printed on a flexible film as well, but the power cell cannot. LG showed the roll-down TV earlier this year, but this TV is AC powered, and needs no portable power source, so the power cell was not an issue.

This Korean company dimmed the scene to hide as many details of the Infinity prototype as possible, and one thing is now clear: the main hurdle on the road to the flexible phone is the battery.

That’s why the Infinity prototype folds accurately in the middle: one of the halves obviously hides the Li-ion battery. The gadget body is also rather thick, especially when folded–it is thicker than the Nokia 3110! And there’s a much more disappointing fact about it: Samsung failed to demonstrate any reasonable usage scenario! There’s nothing the 7.3-inches prototype can do better than any modern “rigid” smartphone: Yes, it can run three apps simultaneously using the multi-active window, but there’s nothing extraordinary in it, thanks to modern multi-cored mobile chips.

Having a thin, really flexible gadget would be a gift from heaven. It would be unbreakable and perhaps water-resistant, as well. If combined with a stylus, the flexible smartphone or tablet could replace books, sketchbooks, and such. Sadly enough, we are going to get foldable tablets, their only advantage being a wow-effect.

Yes, foldable phones will make a spectacular comeback within months, if we are to believe Justin Denison, Samsung’s SVP of mobile product marketing. Samsung had better hurry! Huawei, their immediate competitor in Asia and Europe, officially announced the arrival of the foldable Mate X phone at the beginning of 2019. Microsoft has revived the Andromeda project recently, re-naming it Surface Andromeda. Judging from the leaked concepts, both gadgets will feature the on-screen touch keyboard in the so-called “laptop” mode, something that Denison didn’t show during the presentation.

Nevertheless, I’m rather optimistic about the future of the foldables. It will be a refreshing change from thin, rectangular wearables with those annoying notches!

A few words about Samsung Galaxy S10

We’d like to outline the fact that the Samsung announced that it would launch its foldable Samsung Galaxy S10 flagship phone in January or in February 2019. The new smartphone will have a  flat Inifinty-O display, as well as dual-lens rear camera, a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, a Snapdragon 845 or Exynos 8150 chipset. The display has a circular cut-out for a camera near the left edge of the screen.

This new budget Samsung Galaxy S10 will come in three configurations:

1. 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage
2. 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage
3. 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

One or two months later, in March, 2019, the company will launch its foldable Samsung Galaxy X or Galaxy F (it’s too early to tell the exact name of this model). Samsung will present the Galaxy X alongside a 5G version of the Samsung Galaxy S10.

We still can’t predict the price for the Samsung’s new folding phones. However, they could be expensive, three times more expensive than the basic Galaxy S10 version.

This will be a great step for Samsung as the rebooted screen is really attractive, and makes a big difference to Samsung’s phones.

Links

• Samsung debuts foldable ‘Infinity Flex’ phone display – Engadget.
• Trade in your old Samsung cell phone for top dollar – iGotOffer.