Samsung reveals a folding phone-to-tablet prototype

Flexible display
Samsung looking to mix things up with foldable screens.

With flexible displays now making their debut in the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Round and theLG G Flex, Samsung is looking ahead to new kinds of foldable devices.

In fact, it's already got some prototypes doing the rounds, which it recent showed to investors.

Although the press wasn't invited to this demonstration, Phone Arena heard from Jae Lee, a Daiwa Securities analyst, that two prototypes were on show.

"The first one they showed us was the size of an S3 smartphone which can be folded in half from top to bottom. So like a compact powder used by women" Lee commented.

Shut up and take my money!

He went on to say that "there was also one in the size of a lengthy wallet which can be unfolded on both sides into the size of a tablet computer."

That's all we have to go on so far and it's likely to be a while yet before we see these displays out in the wild, as during its Analyst Day held yesterday, Samsung estimated that its foldable displays won't hit the market until late 2015 or early 2016.

Still, it's an exciting prospect. The idea of a phone sized device which can be folded out into a tablet sounds like more than just a gimmick. At the very least it could make tablets smaller and more portable than ever, but it could also remove the need to have both a phone and a tablet if it can effectively combine the two.

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.