Samsung will add another flagship to its lineup of phones next year, bringing the count to five flagship phones for 2017, if reports hold true. Samsung has gotten into the habit of releasing four flagship smartphones from two families each year.
Joining the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note families next year will be the Galaxy X, according to Chinese-language tech microblog Weibo. So that brings the number of Samsung flagship smartphones set to release next year to five handsets: The Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 edge, Galaxy Note 7, Galaxy Note 7 edge and the Galaxy X.
The Galaxy X is expected to employ a foldable display to make its phablet-size display more manageable for hands and agreeable with pockets. The phone's foldable display will sport a 4K resolution.
Samsung has been collaborating with foldable OLED developer Solip Technology, a company that grew from Korea's KAIST University. And while the Galaxy maker isn't the only company that has been working with foldable display tech, Samsung has already secured patents for such a smartphone.
In its patent filings, Samsung provided art that depicted a smartphone that could bend far enough for its top to touch its bottom. Behind that flexible display, depicted in the patent filings, was a frame with built-in hinges.
The images, which showed the phone would have a rear camera, didn't depict the phone folding completely flat, but the drawing indicated that the smartphone would have enough flexibility to clamshell.
As for the other four phones set to headline 2017 for Samsung, they're all expected to bear 2.5K Super AMOLED displays.
As is this year, 2017 will be critical for Samsung as the Galaxy X won't be the only thing bending unless the company can find away to push back the pressure it has been enduring at both the high and low ends of the mobile market.
Though it enjoyed an uptick near the middle of 2015, the company continues to lose market share overall to Apple and Chinese manufacturers like Huawei and Xiaomi.
Samsung is still top dog in the smartphone market, holding on to about a 21.4 percent share, but the relatively poor performance of the Galaxy S6 series didn't put it back on course to reclaiming that 31.9 percent share it held 10 quarters earlier.
