Patently Mobile and Patently Apple have been the only IP blogs that have faithfully followed the foldable, rollable and stretchable smartphone trend that Samsung has been working on for years. Our archives present dozens of patents covering this potentially exciting next phase of smartphone form factors. In fact, just this morning our Patently Mobile IP blog published a granted patent report covering two of Samsung's latest foldable smartphone patent wins. Some of the patent figures are shown below.

Today, during Samsung's developer conference in San Francisco Samsung unveiled the future of new form factors such as folding and scrolling smartphones using a new display called the Infinity Flex Display.

Yesterday Patently Apple posted a report titled "A Samsung Folding Smartphone Logo Suggests that a Prototype may Surface tomorrow at their U.S Developer Conference."

After years of covering Samsung's new form factor patents it was almost a rush to finally see the future begin to unfold.

Samsung's all-new Infinity Flex Display

Samsung's future foldable smartphone will use what Samsung calls their new Infinity Flex Display allowing a smartphone to fold and unfold hundreds of thousands of times with damaging the display.

In the graphic below, the fourth panel shows you the foldable smartphone in closed mode that provides a front display like a normal Galaxy smartphone. The image is juxtaposed to an image of the folding smartphone in full open mode revealing a mini tablet-like display.

Samsung's bottom panel graphic presented above shows Samsung's focus on a new era of displays for products that will be infold, outfold, roll/scroll and stretch. All of these form factors are covered in Patently Mobile's archives linked to in our opening paragraph.  

Samsung's Foldable Smartphone Prototype

According to Samsung, the displays for this foldable smartphone goes into mass production "in the coming months."

The Full Samsung Developer Conference Keynote

The "Display Technology" segment starts at the 1:17:25 mark of the video below. To rush right to the new foldable smartphone segment, start the video at the 1:24:54 mark. True, Samsung bragged about their true innovation and you have to give them full credit if the foldable smartphone actually arrives in H2 2019 without excuses.

Although the foldable smartphone prototype shown today on stage was a little boxy in design – I'm not quite sure that it was the final look of the device that is likely be a little thinner and refined. Suffice to say that for today Samsung's real breakthrough was showing us their finalized display technology.

On paper, Samsung appears to really have the foldable smartphone ready to hit the market for the holiday season 2019 and it could definitely mark a new era of multiple new form factors.

Google Working with Samsung on a new UI for Foldable Smartphones

To cement the news, Samsung had Google's Head of Android UX Glen Murphy come on stage towards the end of the keynote to say that they're now working with Samsung to support their new foldable smartphone form factor for next year.

Samsung's developer conference also covered other new UI innovations in the works for 2019 for their next-gen Galaxy smartphones that breaks from traditional Android. For geeks wanting to know what Samsung is up to, it's definitely worth watching the conference keynote when you have the time.