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Samsung is reportedly planning to launch a rollable smartphone in 2025. The device will come with an under-display or under-panel camera (UPC) and feature a bezel-less design, noted industry insider @Tech_Reve reports. The product doesn’t yet have a name.
After foldables, rollable or slidable smartphones are said to be the next step in smartphone evolution. Several companies are exploring this design, with a few of them publicly showcasing prototypes and concept devices. Samsung has been toying with the idea for the past few years.
The Korean firm has already secured patents for various rollable and slidable smartphone designs. In the meantime, its display division, Samsung Display, has unveiled several big-size OLED panels that can be rolled into a small package when not in use. In May this year, the company took one such solution to the SID Display Week 2023 in California.
Called Rollable Flex, this OLED panel measures 254.4 mm (or ten inches) in length when extended fully. But if you want to roll it down, the whole screen can hide within a 49 mm (less than two inches) package. That’s a 5X scalability of the screen. It solves the portability issue with large-screen devices. Current foldable smartphones offer a 3X scalability, or even lower.
Of course, Samsung Display didn’t talk about the commercial availability of the Rollable Flex as a smartphone. That isn’t part of its business. The Korean firm’s mobile division (called MX or Mobile Experience) handles that. However, it was only a matter of time before the two units of the Samsung Group came together and worked on a real-world product. And they seem to have something in the pipeline.
Samsung is readying its first rollable smartphone
According to the new rumor, Samsung will begin the mass production of its first-gen rollable smartphone in 2025. The source didn’t share a more precise timeline, but the device will probably arrive alongside the company’s foldables — Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 — around August. That’s unless Samsung plans to give the new rollable more space in the market. In that case, it could arrive separately earlier or later than that.
Alongside the new rollable, Samsung is also working on improving its UPC tech. The company has used an under-panel camera on its Fold series foldables since the Galaxy Z Fold 3 in 2021. Two years on, the image quality is still quite poor. There have been improvements, but not big enough. We’ll have to wait and see what changes over the next couple of years.