Past year, 2016 was an innovation era in the field of smartphone technology. Smartphone technology was able to attain maximum revolution in last year. We have seen smartphones capable of doing tasks that can be done by a powerful computer to the Tango-enabled advanced image processing devices. The RAM sizes have increased rapidly to 6GB for flagship standards and more powerful processors have emerged. According to analysts, the smartphones will get improved day by day at least until 2020 so hopefully, 2017 too will be an exciting year.
Recent reports and rumors coming out regarding Samsung, Microsoft and LG point out to foldable hybrid smartphones which are capable of being Smartphone and Tablet on-demand. These devices will have flexible display fringes on certain points where users can fold the device into half or double to use it in desired screen size. Also, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer giant Lenovo had showcased a set of working prototypes for Flexible hybrid devices at Berlin IFA 2016. So all these devices are expected well to see the light by this year itself.
Among them, mainly LG has recently filed for a patent regarding their upcoming smartphone-tablet hybrid device with a flexible display. From the patent files, when the device is folded to be used as a smartphone, the display will work like two separate displays on both front and rear panel. The rear face will have the Camera module, additional button and fingerprint scanner on a side apart from the ‘secondary’ display occupies the most space. In smartphone-mode, the primary display will have 5.5-inch size and the rear will be the rest later primary display size from 7-inch tablet mode size, which will be almost 1.5-inch or less.
The foldable hybrid display also offers a lot of possibilities in smartphone consuming. The whole display can be worked even when the device is folded and the hinged part can be used as navigational buttons, volume rockers, media buttons and all. The folding part has an intelligent locking parts inside, which lets the device to be in any position easily, yet strongly.
South Korean rivals LG and Samsung are planning to launch these conceptual smartphone by the end of this year and would be rocking the market from 2018. We can also expect any kind of prototypes for the device in this year’s MWC.