Things are pretty quiet on the foldable display front, but the next-generation Samsung Galaxy S7 could break the silence.
It's a highly competitive smartphone market, and having recently lost ground to Apple, Samsung must produce something impactful for its next flagship smartphone. Foldable displays could be just what the company needs in the next flagship war, which should pit the Galax7 S7 and iPhone 7 against each other.
One of Samsung's most innovative concepts is flexibility, and it would be about time the company turned that into reality. Samsung first toyed with this idea back at CES 2011, before showing off its first foldable prototypes at CES 2013. The company has kept rather mum on flexibility ever since, but that could all change soon.
Samsung's vision covers several display types, including "unbreakable," "curved," "foldable" and "rollable." Up until now, the company has released only curved-display smartphones, as seen in its Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy Round and Galaxy S6 Edge models.
Last year, the tech world buzzed when Lee Chang-hoon, Samsung Display vice president of business strategy, said the company planned to launch a foldable device in 2015. The executive noted at the time that Samsung would secure a production capacity of between 30,000 and 40,000 flexible displays per month by the end of 2015.
We're already halfway through the year and no additional tidbits of information have surfaced regarding Samsung's plans for a foldable smartphone — so seeing this concept manifest in a 2015 product seems doubtful. Nevertheless, Samsung could finally implement the technology with its next-generation Galaxy S7 flagship smartphone.
Not too long ago, Business Korea cited an unnamed Samsung executive who said that foldable smartphones could hit the market sometime in 2016. The executive's comments were quite vague, but suggested that the Galaxy S7 could boast this technology.
It remains to be seen whether the Samsung Galaxy S7 will indeed rock a foldable display. If the company is indeed planning to launch a foldable Galaxy S7 in 2016, it would significantly heat up the competition on the smartphone market with something that could challenge the iPhone to the core.
