Earlier today Patently Mobile posted a design patent report covering a gaming style foldable smartphone or tablet with built-in physical button based gaming controls. Yesterday Samsung was also granted a patent for another style of next-gen smartphone or tablet in the form of an "Expandable Display" or a scrollable display.
As the patent figures below illustrate, the device would appear like smartphone for basic functionality. When a larger display is desired for gaming or watching YouTube or movies, the left and right side of the phone are able to be pulled open with the display being able to expand wider via a rolling display mechanism.
Samsung's patent FIG. 1A above shows a front elevational view of an expandable display device in an inserted configuration; FIG. 1B shows a front elevational view of the expandable display device of FIG. 1A in an expanded configuration; and FIG. 2 shows a cross-sectional view of the expandable display device of FIGS. 1A-1B taken along the line II-II of FIG. 1B.
Samsung's patent FIG. 3 above shows a perspective view of a panel unit and a pair of rollers; FIG. 11 shows a perspective view of a lower internal portion of an expandable display device.
Samsung thinks that consumers will appreciate having a device that easily portable yet able to be enlarged on demand.
As far as patents go, Samsung's first wave of display manipulation patents focused almost exclusively on foldable designs. The second wave appears to be favoring scrollable/rollable display style devices.
Last month Patently Mobile covered a similar invention via a patent application from Samsung with the image below coming from that patent filing. In that same month Samsung was granted at least 2 other scrollable device inventions that you could review here.
Samsung's granted patent was originally filed in Korea in October 2016 and filed in the U.S. on October 4, 2017. Samsung introduced their Infinity Flex display for foldable, rollable and stretchable displays back on November 7th.
Samsung had a huge lead over their competitors in filing patents for scrollable and foldable display devices. Yet Huawei will be launching a foldable smartphone in the first half of 2019.
Side Notes
A surprise folding smartphone entry from Xiaomi that created a lot of buzz this month with a video from their Global Spokesperson won't be ready for 2019 as some had hoped for.
Earlier today Digitimes posted a report wherein Xiaomi's President and Co-founders Bin Lin stated that their foldable smartphone prototype that used a next-gen display from Visionox conquered a series of technical issues with four-axis folding and flexible cover technologies.
Lin further noted that the prototype is still under trial production, and the company will consider commercializing the model in the future – without any kind of timeline guidance.
Visionox ranked as China's top as well as the world's third largest AMOLED panel maker in 2018, according to data compiled by All View Consulting (AVC).
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