Update from January 5, 2023: The rumors about Samsung’s foldable and rollable screen have come true. It is a tablet called “Flex Hybrid OLED”. When retracted, it has a screen diagonal of 10.5 inches and an aspect ratio of 4:3. When rolled out, it measures 12.4 inches and has an aspect ratio of 16:10.
Samsung sees the future of laptop design in this technology. For the time being, however, the Flex Hybrid OLED is only intended as a prototype and will probably not appear on the mass market. Rather, it serves as a foretaste of what we can expect from Samsung on the laptop front in the years to come.
Samsung Flex Hybrid OLED (Bild: Samsung)
Original notification from January 3, 2023: The crackling of new rumors and upcoming announcements is in the air as one of the biggest tech trade shows in the world is upon us. At CES 2023, which will take place from January 5th to 8th, 2023, Samsung according to the Korean news portal etnews.com introduce an OLED display that can be both folded and rolled out.
Foldable screens are nothing new and we already know them from smartphones like the Samsung Z Fold 4, for which our expert Patrick wrote a detailed test for you:
Samsung Z Fold 4 im Test
Unique phone, but far from perfect
Roll-out displays, for example, are already a thing of the past LG Signature OLED R or (so far) unfinished projects like that Samsung Galaxy Z Roll or the LG Rollable, which was almost finished and yet never launched. A Korean YouTube channel presented the fully functional model in September last year:
link to YouTube content
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Unique so far: foldable AND rollable
The combination of both technologies would be unique to date and promises the option of choosing between three screen sizes with just one display. The panel is said to be unfolded to expand it from eight inches to ten inches. After unrolling, the display will probably have a screen diagonal of 12.4 inches.
According to etnews, it will be called Hybrid-Display
designated. It’s supposed to be a cell phone in 8-inch mode and used as a tablet or laptop in the larger modes if you connect a Bluetooth keyboard. The advantage of both technologies is that the cell phone in the smallest mode is not such a block in the pocket.
The design of the Samsung hybrid should look something like this. (Image: etnews.com)
However, it is unlikely that such a display will be delivered to customers in the near future, since the combination of both technologies also means that the technical difficulties of both technologies can be overcome. So the hinge for folding and the metal frame for unrolling have to be combined. Mass suitability could therefore still be a long time coming.
That so far unreleased Samsung Triple Fold also had a similar principle, except that it could be folded three times, as the name suggests. It is therefore conceivable that Samsung has now replaced the Triple Fold with the new, previously nameless model or has changed the design significantly. Several models with three screen sizes would also be conceivable.
In addition to the technical data available to them, etnews also revealed when the panel is to be presented: it should be on January 5th, i.e. on the first day of CES 2023. However, there is also talk of »private ideas«. Whether we really see the display in two days remains to be seen.
LG also has news to announce for CES 2023 in the form of brand new OLED TVs. Colleague Linh has the information for you:
Would you get a smartphone-tablet-laptop hybrid? What do you think of the combination of foldable and rollable? Would you like to tell us in the comments?
