Samsung wants to release a foldable smartphone in 2018

The director of Samsung’s mobile division, Koh Dong-jin, has said that the South Korean electronics giant wants to release a smartphone with a folding screen in 2018. However, he could not give a specific date.

According to the director, a number of problems still need to be solved before the phone actually ends up on the shelves. For him, 2018 is the current goal, but he stated that the device with the folding screen will only be released once the technical challenges have been overcome, Bloomberg reports. He did not provide further information about what problems Samsung still has to solve.

In recent years, there have been more rumors about a foldable smartphone that Samsung would release. In April, a leading Samsung engineer, Kim Tae-woong, said the foldable smartphones won’t be introduced until 2019. According to him, this delay was related to technological challenges and the good sales of screens with no or very thin screen bezels. Partly because of these good sales figures, Samsung would not be in a hurry to develop smartphones with folding screens.

Foldable smartphones have been worked on for years. The biggest challenge is making screens that can be folded outwards, because the material has to be able to stretch. Samsung has already applied for several patents on systems to make the entire device foldable. The manufacturer wants to use flexible OLED screens for the foldable smartphone. The company is already using it for making curved screens, such as those in the Galaxy S7 edge and those of the Galaxy S8 and S8+.

Prototype foldable OLED screen from Samsung from 2009