This week more news came to light regarding Samsung’s first move into smartglasses that will work with Android phones. Secondly, the U.S. Patent office revealed a Samsung granted patent last week regarding a smartphone with a double fold, something that they’ve been working on since 2012 – way ahead of Huawei who received so much attention and praise for their recent Mate XT.  

A Samsung Patent for a Double Fold Smartphone

Samsung notes in their patent that display devices provide users with information by displaying various images on a display screen. Generally, display devices display the information within an allocated screen. Recently, flexible display devices including a foldable flexible display panel have been developed. Such a flexible display device may be folded, rolled, or bent, unlike rigid display devices. The flexible display device deformable into various shapes may be carried irrespective of existing screen sizes, and thus, the user convenience may be improved.

Samsung’s patent FIG. 1 below is a schematic perspective view of a display device according to an embodiment. FIG. 2 is a side view of a display device.

This is a technical patent about the display in this possible future double fold smartphone. To revew the details, check out Samsung’s granted patent 12134262. A double fold smartphone provides 3 panel sections. For some odd reason, the industry refers this to a tri-fold smartphone.

A new Korean report this week claimed that Huawei and Samsung are the only smartphone OEMs making money selling foldables that other Chinese OEMs are considering to downscale or withdraw from foldable that are still too expensive for the mass market consumer at this point in time.

Not only are foldable phones expensive, a recent iFixit report found that replacing a damaged foldable display on a Pixel 9 Pro Fold phone was more expensive than buying  a new iPhone 16.  Ouch! Until pricing can come down significantly, book-styled foldable smartphones will remain a niche product.

In that light, Samsung’s double-fold smartphone is likely aimed at competing with Huawei in China so as to keep them in check. It’s a future trend to be sure, but too ahead of the market at this point in time.   

Samsung Smartglasses

Earlier this month Patently Apple posted two reports about Samsung’s future smartglasses (Nov. 5 and Nov. 9). Today, in a report from the Korean Maeil Business Newspaper they note that Smart glasses with artificial intelligence (AI) that Samsung Electronics is making with Google and Qualcomm are expected to be released in the third quarter of next year. It is similar to Meta's smart glasses, Ray Ban Smart Glass, and the initial production is estimated to be 500,000 units.

"Samsung Electronics' plan to release AI smart glasses was confirmed earlier this month, and its first production volume is 500,000 units in the third quarter of 2025," Wellsen XR, a research company in Shenzhen, China, said in a note left for customers on the 15th (local time). Something we reported earlier this month.

Yet the Wellsen report added a few new factoids. They noted that Samsung's smart glasses will use Qualcomm's AR1 semiconductor as the main processing unit and NXP semiconductor as the auxiliary processing unit, and the camera is 12 million pixels and will be equipped with Sony IMX681 CMOS image sensor.

The smart glasses can be used for payment with QR code recognition, gesture recognition, and human recognition functions, and the battery has a 155mAh performance, with a total weight of 50 grams, the company claimed.

In addition, the Gemini giant language model (LLM) will be installed in cooperation between Samsung and Google. Source