The most notable dual screen device that had been arguably successful is the Nintendo DS. Sony also created a dual screen tablet, Sony Tablet P, that is foldable into one large unit, and Spring Design had manufactured a patented dual screen display e-book reader named Alex. Most of these designs though consist of two separate screens.
Samsung had announced before of its futuristic plans about launching smartphones with bendable and foldable displays. Samsung had accumulated a number of patents for folding and dual screen models for the past few years but the prototypes have yet to evolve into the commercial arena. These patents led to a great amount of rumors regarding a future foldable smartphone from Samsung, although none of them turned out to be exact, as the technology seemingly was not equipped just yet.
The company has proven its willingness to explore different form factors as Samsung started integrating flexible screens, first with the single-edge Galaxy Note Edge, and recently on the dual-edge Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge.
Reports have floated that Samsung has initiated Project V or Project Valley, and though it is still on its early stages of development, Project V aims to create the company's first smartphone with foldable dual screen display. Battery life would be one of the challenges the engineers would have to face if the company is serious in making two energy-consuming screens on one smartphone. Its ambitious nature may not make it to reality and the project could be terminated any time, but if the device materializes, it would feature a support for multiple gestures into switching between two possible AMOLED panels. Samsung Gemini is one of the rumored names available. Some rumors hinted that this V-like model could be released as early as 2016, and the company has been very busy to meet this deadline.
Samsung is not the only company that is currently busy on the foldable screen technology. Rumors stated that rival LG has been gearing up to launch a foldable smartphone in 2016. LG has demonstrated before a 5.9-inch smartphone screen that can tolerate up to 100,000 bends without visible drop of the screen quality last October 2014.
All reports gathered regarding Project Valley are still rumors but with great supporting background information. We still have to wait for official announcements from both LG and Samsung, but it would be great to know who would eventually produce the first foldable dual-screen smartphone.
Photo: Luca Viscardi | Flickr
