As Apple was unveiling their exciting new iPhone X at their product announcement event on Tuesday, Samsung attempted to take away some of their shine by promoting a phone that has the possibility of being even more revolutionary.
Samsung teased a foldable smart phone that would open up like a book and have dual screens. Despite having unveiled the bezel-less Note 8 only weeks ago, this new phone with a bendable display is said to be released under the company’s flagship Galaxy Note line, potentially making it the Note 9.
During a news conference in South Korea, president of mobile business at Samsung Dongjin Koh informed reporters of the futuristic new handset.
“As the head of the business, I can say our current goal is next year. When we can overcome some problems for sure, we will launch the product,” said Koh. “We are digging thoroughly into several issues we must overcome, as we don’t want to just make a few, sell a few and be done. We want to hear that Samsung made a very good product,” Koh said. “We have a plan to adopt a foldable display in our roadmap.”
Rumors of Samsung making a foldable phone for years and they unveiled a bendable AMOLED display prototype named Youm back in 2013 named Youm. They have previously applied for patents on foldable phones.
This dual-screen smart phone is expected to be comprised of two OLED displays and is able to be folded in half. In August, Samsung announced a modernized flip phone, basically a RAZR for 2017.
In other Samsung news from the press conference, Koh announced that the South Korea tech giant has already rebounded from the disaster that was the Note 7. The Note 8 recorded the highest pre-orders among the Note series.
“The 395,000 units sold on the first day of pre-orders is a higher than expected figure,” Koh said. “The figures for the first five days show that pre-orders [for the Note 8] are about 2.5 times those of the Note 7 last year.”
In November of 2016, Samsung paid $8 billion in cash to acquire Harman, a Connecticut-based company that makes connected car systems. Koh revealed that Samsung and Harman are developing an artificial intelligence-enabled speaker that users can command it to play music and other tasks by speaking to it.
[TheVerge]