While the Galaxy S10 already looks like a mouthwatering combination of long-awaited design changes, headline-grabbing tech and faster software, Samsung has something more exciting lined-up which will arrive even sooner. And the source of this news couldn’t be better…
Speaking to CNBC, Samsung’s Mobile Division CEO DJ Koh has confirmed “it’s time to deliver” a Galaxy smartphone with a folding display. What’s more, Koh hinted the launch could happen as soon as November at the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco.
Koh said Samsung is moving fast “after consumer surveys…showed that there is a market for that kind of handset” and he has previously admitted Samsung “didn’t want to lose the world’s first title” to a rival.
Koh didn’t giveaway the exact design of the folding phone (which has gone by both ‘Galaxy X’ and ‘Galaxy F’ in past leaks), but he did stress both Samsung’s attention to detail in making it and the high expectations:
“[E]very feature, every innovation should have a meaningful message to our end customer. So when the end customer uses it [they think] ‘wow, this is the reason Samsung made it’.”
Perhaps surprisingly, the technology behind folding displays has been around for several years but fashioning the internal components around it has proved a lot more challenging. Achieve this, however, and there are obvious advantages to a folding phone, such as its more compact size when folded and the added durability of folding the screen away when not in use.
Of course there is one major potential downside: the mind-blowing price Samsung is expected to ask. There are also doubts over how many will be made.
That said, with Apple significantly upping its game next week, the time has come for Samsung to turn 2018 from a solid year of iteration into a year remembered for true innovation…
