Samsung Display is on a roll, both figuratively and literally. It increased its profits eightfold in Q4, compared to the same period the previous year, riding on the iPhone 12 sales coattails, as it supplies the OLED panels for the series, and experiencing a boom in TV demand from locked down people.
That's the figurative part, but the literal association is much more interesting, as Samsung Display's Senior VP Choi Kwon-young mentioned during Samsung's quarterly results press conference that it will dabble in rollable and slidable form factors.
This advantage, the company said, will allow it to use low-power, high-refresh rate displays like the jaw-dropping one on the S21 Ultra (we clocked 16 hours of screen-on time while browsing in our S21 Ultra review) for its phones going forward.
Not only that, but the early lead it has in foldable screen panels will translate into the Fold and Flip lines becoming more mainstream, it promised, perhaps by lowering the starting price of the next entrants in those series, just like it did with the Galaxy S21 phones.
So far so good, but, after playing with rollable and slidable prototypes for years, Samsung may finally be ready to take a device to the market. "Samsung Display said on Thursday that it will develop new display form factors such as rollable and slidable to cement in leadership in 2021" is the exact quote from the Korean tech publication The Elec, and we couldn't be more excited.
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Does that mean that a Galaxy Roll and Slide are in the cards? We don't know yet, as Samsung may first apply the concept to something other than phones, but if the myriad of such Samsung patents (like the ones you see rendered by LetsGoDigital render above) are any indication, it has been preparing to usher in a rollable, slidable display phone for a while now.
So far, the rumors are for a phone that can slide out from a 6-inch diagonal to become an 8-inch tablet. The Galaxy Fold line now does something similar, but the rollable form factor would do away with the crease in the middle, for instance.
Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong with the alleged rollable phone prototype talking to Samsung researchers
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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.
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