In recent times, Samsung Electronics has been quite serious with the foldable smartphone development. Recently, the company was given another patent for a foldable device that is completely different from what we have seen so far. This patent was filed internationally under U.S. patent number US20170351297. This device can be folded in multiple ways and from the patent, the device (probably a smartphone) has dual screens installed in metal frames which are joined together by aĀ ācoupling.ā This axis enables the device to be foldedĀ open into a larger display, it can also be folded out so that it hasĀ a screen at the front and the back or folded in so thatĀ the screens are facing each other.
If this device ends up as a smartphone, allĀ antennas for connectivity will beĀ embedded into the frame of the displays to preventĀ interference which canĀ degrade signal integrity. There is also an allowance forĀ sensors and radios on the patent which suggests that this could be a smartphone. From the chart, a device can be developed which supportsĀ Samsungās S Pen, with a pen sensor being listed under the Input Device heading. The sensor on the patent is a biometric sensor which could be aĀ fingerprint scanner or aĀ health monitoring sensor. As of now, there is no known Samsung device which comes with this design thus this design is completely new.
And here comes the usual advise with Samsung and patents. This company files for thousands of patent annually and a huge chunk of these patents are approved but only a handful of these devices ever sees the light of day. Thus there is no guarantee that this device is hitting the market anytime soon.
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A foldable device will look more like two phones than a phone and a tablet. It will also be very expensive which is likely to render it DOA. Hopefully samsung won’t follow through on the patent.
ugly and will fail