Samsung's patent design about an advanced foldable display may be used to upgrade future Galaxy Note units. Lee Chang-hoon, vice-president of Samsung Electronics business strategic group, has introduced that the company's mid-long term plans during the Samsung Investor Forum conducted in New York last November 2014 include supplying devices with foldable displays.
Chang-hoon impressed that these advanced displays would be incorporated in an upcoming 10-inch tablet and 5.5-inch smartphone over the next 18 months. Galaxy Note 5, the next flagship smartphone of Samsung, will be introduced in September 2015, and may possibly be the smartphone that Chang-hoon is talking about.
Samsung's latest dual-display folding device patent showed that it would sport a unique opening and closing configuration courtesy of an advanced hinge design. The patent also features sensing hover capabilities on both screens. Samsung engineers had incorporated infrared sensors and magnetic field sensors, which allow the phone to sense hovering, on one screen for the user's fingers and the other one for an input pen.
This input pen, which Samsung referred to as the "Photographer," boasts of an advanced camera placed at the topmost part of the pen and this input camera pen could be conveniently inserted in one of the screen displays. The camera pen could be used for both taking photographs and recording videos, according to the patent. By double tapping the end of the input pen on the screen, it now becomes a digital eraser to delete text on the display. Samsung also provided a chart of hovering gestures for the pen so that it could perform programmed tasks depending on the user, such as flipping an image to view the backside.
Microsoft and LG also filed for patents about dual-display and are possibly on their way in developing products like Samsung. However, only Samsung provided a realistic timeline to top U.S. financial analysts in the Investor Forum of between late 2015 to late 2016 in releasing dual-display products and with competitor Apple increasing sales for iPhone 6, it would be best not to back out from its original strategy.
Project Valley reports about a folding display smartphone with dual screens that supports multiple gestures reconfirm that this advance smartphone may soon be realized.
Samsung's next flagship smartphone with the given advanced patents incorporated would definitely be the industry's next game-changer.
Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns | Flickr
