Of course, details about the patent are a little lacking, but according to the diagrams included in the filing, the display will be mounted to the body of a smartphone. When you want to use a larger screen, all you have to do is slide the main body up, and the display will expand.
As cool as this seems, it really is just a patent for now, so there’s anything but a guarantee that we’ll ever see it on the shelves at Best Buy. Although Samsung might be able to technically make this rollup smartphone, that doesn’t mean it will work well enough to release as a product.
Samsung may be looking to release a groundbreaking product in the near future, though, as its shareholders have reportedly expressed anger over the company’s stalling smartphone business, and they want the company to find new avenues for profit and success. If the company can come up with some great ideas to change the smartphone game, however, that could certainly change.
Still, it looks as though flexible displays will become more common in the future. Samsung and LG have both expressed serious interest in the idea, and have even shown off a few prototypes at events like CES. The closest we’ve come to a flexible display on a consumer product, however, is the display on the Samsung Galaxy Round and the LG G Flex line, so we definitely have a long way to go before they become commonplace.
