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Samsung demos amazing folding phone

Interior OLED screen folds in half

A video has appeared online of what’s claimed to be an OLED display able to fold itself in half to become a mobile phone.

Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com

Initially, the phone - which it’s thought was recently seen on a Samsung stand at a display tech trade show in Japan - looks more like a portable media player because of its large - 5in or so – display.

But suddenly the phone automatically folds itself in half, revealing a secondary – yet much smaller – screen on the opposite side. After a few seconds the device then opens itself up again.

When closed, a Samsung emblem can clearly be seen underneath the smaller screen. A menu of icons can be seen on the smaller screen, suggesting the front panel is touch-sensitive. What appear to be the usual call make and break buttons are also built into the unit’s front.

Official technical specifications haven’t been seen yet, so it’s difficult to say whether the bendy device will ever make it to Blighty.

However, the folding talker could be Samsung’s latest innovation following its recent unveiling of a bendable 4in OLED screen, which the firm displayed last month.

Samsung phone reviews
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Latest Comments

"Folding" or two screens?

I suspect it's more likely that this is two screens which operate right to the very edge along the "fold" line. But that's quite an achievement given the usual issues with encapsulating OLED displays. (They use a lithium and/or calcium cathode layer, which obviously doesn't last long with any water/oxygen penetration). You could of course use a light-piping layer to shift the apparent image over an underlying seal-border, but this would add thickness undesired in a slimline consumer product.

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This can only lead to one thing

I for one welcome our handy pocket sized but unfolding to 7 foot tall monster laser sword weilding overlords.

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@Charles Manning

200 times per day? Good god, man - that's once every 6 minutes if you're up 18 hours! You must really be in demand...

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How many cycles?

So we can see a display that can be folded gently at room temperature through a few cycles at a trade show... There are a significant number of hurdles to making a shippable product that can be flipped open at freezing and hot temperatures, 150-200 times per day for a 5 year product life

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The same thing we do every night, Pinky

Why did the person recording stay there for so long looking at it while it was open, after it did it's close-and-open routine? I stupidly kept watching, thinking something else MUST happen since there was over a minute left. But no, nothing. I felt like I was part of a "Pinky and the Brain" episode, where Brain gets everyone in the world to watch something so that he can brainwash them. Then again, maybe he already did that with "reality" shows... Zort! Poit! Narf!

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