If you thought Samsung was happy with just the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip lines when it comes to foldable phones then think again. We’ve known for a while that the company is experimenting with different foldable form factors, and now some of these experiments have been shown off in a video.
A short clip shared by @UniverseIce – a reputable leaker – shows several foldable and extendable Samsung phones which haven’t yet been announced.
One of these has the look of a standard handset but then lets the user pull one or both sides of the screen to extend it, while another is like a Galaxy Z Fold 4 but with two folds rather than one, so it opens out into a laptop-sized screen.
interesting pic.twitter.com/k9ejHUGzr0August 14, 2022
We also catch a glimpse of one that folds like a laptop, but it’s all screen rather than having a keyboard on the bottom half, and in this video it’s displaying a controller layout for gaming.
While we’d take any leak with a pinch of salt, this looks like an official Samsung promotional video, and the contents would have been hard to fake, so this is likely genuine.
That said, for now these are possibly just experiments and concept devices, so while some of these form factors might see the light of day eventually, we wouldn’t expect an imminent announcement.
Analysis: not the first time we’ve seen Samsung’s experiments
While this is the first time we’ve seen these concepts on video, it’s not the first time Samsung has shown off these ideas.
Back in November the company launched a site highlighting potential uses for foldable OLED screens, and these included several smartphone concepts.
One was the ‘Slidable Flex’ which looks a lot like the stretchable screen in the video. Then there’s the Flex Note which is the laptop-like device. There were others too which aren’t seen in this new video, like the Rollable Flex, which has a rollable screen.
So Samsung seems to have no shortage of foldable phone ideas. Hopefully some of them will end up as commercially available products eventually, as with the likes of the Motorola Razr 2022 and the Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 following Samsung’s lead in terms of designs, it’s already starting to feel like there’s a lack of innovation in the foldable space.