Meet the "Infinity Flex Display" by Samsung

Source: The Verge

Samsung has officially announced and demoed its first foldable smartphone, and it certainly looks much more practical than Royole's FlexPai.

Calling it an "Infinity Flex Display", the folding screen, on the surface, appears to be just as vibrant as their current displays. While Samsung chose to dim the lights to protect some design elements, they still showed a very decent look at their new device at today's developer conference keynote. The phone itself features a 7.3" display with a vertical running hinge that allows the device to close like a book. On the outside, Samsung claims that an external display will be present for phone-like capabilities; when closed, the device looks like a thicker, candybar style device.

On the software side, Samsung claims that the phone will be able to simultaneously run three applications with "multi-window". Google also announced earlier today that they were working with Samsung to develop and enhance the Android OS to work with the new device, and they will work with developers to optimize and support applications for the foldable devices. This should make it much more optimized than Royole's WaterOS.

Closed folding phone

Open folding phone

According to Justin Denison, SVP of mobile product marketing, Samsung is ready to mass-produce in a matter of months, but they have not determined when the product will be available for purchase. However, with competitors such as Huawei and LG working on foldable devices as well as Microsoft still plugging away at Andromeda, Samsung is surely looking to release sooner rather than later. Much as the notch dominated the mobile world for the better part of two year, folding formfactors are likely to dominate for the next few years.