This Samsung concept shows us what a smartphone with a 100% screen-to-body ratio would look like

Posted on 15/11/2020 by Sarang Sheth

In the pursuit of a phone that’s 100% display, this Samsung concept (designed using a patent uncovered by LetsGoDigital) makes some pretty wild design decisions that result in a phone that’s definitely interesting to look at. Meet the Samsung Galaxy Infinite Concept (at least that’s what I want to call it…), a phone with two wraparound displays that cover the front and back halves of the phone. I say halves because the phone has a minimal parting line running through it, because the Galaxy Infinite is, in fact, a slider phone!

The sliding mechanism makes up for the fact that with a 100% screen-to-body ratio (on both the front AND the back), there’s really no space for cameras… so the Galaxy Infinite concept builds the cameras into the concealed surfaces that reveal themselves when the two halves slide apart. The phone comes with a single set of cameras that serve as both front and rear-facing shooters (because with a 100% display, the phone doesn’t really have a front or back). Slide the cameras out and you can either click rear-facing shots using the opposite screen as a viewfinder, or use the same-side screen for viewing your selfies as you click them.

The 100% screen-to-body ratio results in a few obvious trade-offs. Sure, there’s no notch, or no hole-punch camera… but there’s also no volume or power button on the Galaxy Infinite, given that the screens cover the side edges of the phone too. The upper and lower edges seem to be spared, however, for critical components like earpieces, microphones, charging ports, and possibly a SIM tray. I assume the lack of buttons is replaced by a haptic-touch system found in phones like the Xiaomi Mi Mix Alpha, which lets you tap to have a volume widget show up on the side of the screen.

So why would Samsung patent a smartphone with wraparound screens on the front and the back? Well, the answer is simply, because it’s possible. Xiaomi launched the Mi Mix Alpha for practically the same reason… as a flex, to show what they’re capable of producing. Similar to concept vehicles displayed by automotive companies at motor shows, I doubt these phones will really ever hit the shelves for consumers to buy (whether there’s actually demand for these phones is a completely different question). However, they’re a great indication of innovation, and also help companies really explore new avenues, while bringing the cost of expensive technologies down in the long run. I guess we can all agree that THAT’s definitely a good thing.

“The brand new patent entitled ‘Electronic device’ was applied for by Samsung Electronics at the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) in July this year and was published on October 29, 2020 and included in the database of the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Office)”, reports LetsGoDigital.

Designer: Giuseppe Spinelli (Snoreyn) for LetsGoDigital

Image Credits: LetsGoDigital

This flexible laptop could completely revolutionize the computer category

Posted on 30/07/2020 by Sarang Sheth

There’s nothing more disruptive than a product that challenges the presence of multiple markets. Meet the Paysage, a conceptual computing device that targets both laptop and desktop users with a unique hybrid design. Its design features a two-part construction – the main CPU, which sits within the keyboard-unit (like most laptops), and the screen, which rather than resting on the top of the keyboard, comes with a flexible construction that wraps around the top and the bottom, sandwiching the keyboard in between. The image above should fairly help illustrate what I mean.

This unique build is what sets the Paysage apart. Flip open half the screen and you’ve got yourself a standard laptop/netbook, equipped with a keyboard, trackpad, four USB-C ports, an Aux input, and its dedicated speakers. However, things get interesting when you realize that the entire keyboard unit detaches from the screen completely, leaving you with a much larger flexible display that you can open out and mount on a tabletop stand, giving you a desktop experience complete with a massive elevated screen and an external keyboard.

The Paysage was originally envisioned nearly a decade ago (and subsequently covered on YD too), and it’s only with recent advancements in flexible OLED displays that the Paysage seems more real. In its latest iteration, designer Kevin Depape details out the device further, with magnetic fixtures, connecting cables, and an overall design that seems like something Microsoft could pull off if they tried. A Surface DeskBook perhaps?!

Designer: Kevin Depape

Royole’s smart speaker has a wrap-around curved display… and I’m honestly wondering why.

Posted on 09/01/2020 by Sarang Sheth

Designed to be like an Amazon Echo Show but in the shape of an Amazon Echo, Royole’s new Mirage smart speaker tries to integrate flexible displays into smart speakers. The Mirage is a cylindrically shaped smart-speaker (with a floating halo) that responds to Amazon’s Alexa, but the most noticeable element about it is the screen that envelops nearly half the device, wrapping around from side to side. Royole’s always been an advocate of flexible electronics, with a folding tablet, phone, and even keyboard in its catalog of products. The Mirage adds itself to that list with the flexible display, which provides a new way of showcasing information that your smart speaker relays to you.

You talk to the Mirage just the way you’d talk to any other speaker… except when you ask it the weather, it shows you the weather in a graphical format on its wrap-around 7.8-inch AMOLED screen. Ask it to play a video and it does that too, except making it mildly inconvenient because of the curved nature of the display. It seems more of a gimmick than a feature really, and apart from the fact that it could possibly have some really cool visualizations display on it as it plays back music, Royole still needs to define a clear purpose for the Mirage other than the fact that it’s possible to make a smart-speaker with a curved screen on it. Unlike the Amazon Echo Show, the Mirage doesn’t do video calls either, so that definitely leaves a LOT to be desired considering the speaker retails for a cool $899. You’d honestly be better off buying a JBL Pulse 4 for almost a third of the price.

Designer: Royole

This iPhone Pro concept is the perfect bridge between the smartphone and the professional tablet

Posted on 10/12/2019 by Sarang Sheth

Now that Jony Ive is no longer running Apple’s design team (he’s off their website too), a folding iPhone may just be a possibility. Here’s what Seong Jun Park believes it should look like. Park’s flexible iPhone manifests itself as an intersection between a phone and a tablet (like most folding phones), but the advantage Apple has over its competition is its complete dominance in the tablet sector. The iPhone Pro neatly goes from a regular smartphone (with a notch) to a 4:3 screen tablet (with a slightly offset notch). It comes with not one, but two hinges that separate the AMOLED screen into three parts with outward facing screens, and a slight cantilever at one end that allows the rear camera to not be covered (not the most elegant of solutions, but then again it lets you have a screen right beside the powerful triple-lens rear-view camera.

To facilitate folding, the iPhone Pro ditches the glass back for the padded fabric used in the iPad’s smart cases. I’d guess that the fabric still retains the iPhone Pro’s ability to wirelessly charge. The iPhone Pro’s biggest sell (apart from the 3-part screen, obviously) is its Pro suffix, which, with the large screen can only mean one thing… Apple Pencil support! The phone comes with the ability to dock and charge your Apple Pencil, even using it on the iPhone’s vast tablet-esque screen to quite literally get the best of both worlds. Plus, with a screen that big, Apple TV+ would probably just come to life, right??

Designer: Seong Jun Park

Here’s why the Moto Razr is an absolute success but other folding phones aren’t

Posted on 14/11/2019 by Sarang Sheth

Post today’s launch and amidst multiple hands-on videos, the 2019 Moto Razr could easily be this year’s most desirable phone… which is a pretty remarkable achievement considering the lukewarm response flexible-display phones have been getting on an average. The phone capitalizes on its history of being the coolest phone of the 2000s, along with the fact that it has a flexible folding screen. The phone hits the shelves in January 2020 for a price-tag of $1500 and my guess is it just might be a runaway success. Here are a few things Motorola absolutely nailed, resulting in such a remarkable piece of tech.

1. Phone first, tech later

Here’s probably the biggest reason why the Moto Razr is such a win. Motorola didn’t force its technology onto the smartphone. It saw the technology, spotted an application, and then proceeded forward… unlike Samsung, Huawei, and Royole, who designed their phones specifically FOR the flexible screen. Motorola just got the timing absolutely right, and the fact that they had the Razr brand to revamp. Samsung’s “develop the technology and force it onto a smartphone” attitude is probably exactly why it isn’t as appealing as the Razr, which just already has that swagger.

2. The clamshell format and its perfect size

The clamshell format has historically always worked better than that mini-book format from Nokia’s Communicator series. Besides, a clamshell phone always results in a smaller phone when closed, whereas all of Nokia’s Communicator phones, just like the Samsung Galaxy, remain pretty large even when closed. If you look at the 2019 Razr, it’s conveniently small when closed, and when opened, is just about the same height as the original Razr, albeit with a nice, long portrait display. Moreover, it still FITS IN ONE HAND (learn a lesson, other companies). Motorola’s understanding of sizes, ratios, and formats just gives Razr the upper edge.

3. A longer display is better than a ‘bigger’ display

Given that almost all of our mobile-based content depends on scrolling upwards and downwards, even so much so that content is now being created in portrait mode more than ever (proof: TikTok), we don’t really NEED bigger squarish displays, to be honest. The square display also doesn’t do anyone any favors. You’re still left with pretty large black boxes on the top and bottom of the videos you’re watching, and the only perceivable advantage of the large display is the ability to multi-task, which personally, hasn’t really caught on yet. Besides, a phone with a hinge along the longer edge results in a longer and more visible ‘crease’. Motorola cleverly made a phone that puts its hinge along the phone’s width, resulting in a crease no doubt, but a relatively much smaller crease.

4. No technical snags like the Samsung Galaxy Fold (Plus, they nailed that hinge)

Take a look at how Motorola designed the screen to fold inwards without an air-gap like in the Samsung Galaxy and you’ll realize how Motorola did it right. Admittedly, it’s been just a few hours since the release, but not a single reviewer has complained about dead pixels, bumps, and faults in the Moto Razr, especially given how quickly and carelessly people close that clamshell hinge. Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, on the other hand, required being extremely careful, and even despite that, almost every early reviewer ended up destroying that flexible display. Call it great engineering on Motorola’s part, or just shoddy engineering on everyone else’s part, but hot damn, that phone’s had an absolutely track record so far.

5. That sweet retro app

Possibly one of my favorite parts of the 2019 Razr is the retro app, that gives the phone its classic old-timey interface, complete with that edgy Tron-esque keyboard. Motorola recognized the power of nostalgia, and I’m pretty sure people will be bootlegging this app onto their Pixels and iPhones just for the nostalgia-factor! Good job, Motorola!

6. The price tag

Here’s why I think the Moto Razr won’t just be popular, but will also be a commercial success. It has an incredibly low barrier of entry, with a price of $1500, which is considerably lower than the Huawei Mate X which retails for $2600 and the Samsung Galaxy Fold, which retails for $1980. The fact that it’s better, cheaper, and more desirable than its competition in the folding phone market just means that Motorola’s taken the time and energy to get absolutely everything right, from the phone’s design to its tech, engineering and price… and Motorola knows it has a winner on its hands. I mean, even the theme music in the video above has the lyrics “they don’t make ’em like me no more”.

This article’s pretty much a hat-tip to the guys at Motorola for absolutely nailing this beauty, and a love-letter of sorts to the company from a complete tech enthusiast and someone who’s done his fair share to build the hype for the smartphone *wink wink*. Hey Motorola, if you’re feeling generous, and want to reach out to me with a small token of appreciation, feel free to hit me up via email!

The future of flexible displays lies in Laptops… The ‘Flexbook’ concept shows why.

Posted on 30/09/2019 by Sarang Sheth

Daehnert’s Flexbook concept appeared on my Instagram feed suddenly one fine morning, and I’ll admit, I paused to completely take it in. I didn’t just like the design, I loved it, because it felt almost like a eureka moment for me, because we’ve been struggling with finding a good use for flexible displays. Companies have tried them out in smartphones and failed miserably… but the Flexbook provides a refreshingly different use-case for the flexible display; and more importantly, it makes sense.

The Flexbook is like a laptop met a sandwich. Unlike most laptops, which have a two-part design connected via a hinge, the Flexbook has three parts. A main body, comprising your motherboard, electronics, ports, and keyboard… and around it, a two-part flexible screen that sandwiches the keyboard in the middle. The Flexbook can be traditionally used as a laptop with a 3:2 12.6-inch display, simply by opening it and using one half of the screen, or as a massive Wacom Cintiq-style tablet PC with a neat 4:3 17.8-inch touchscreen. This interchangeability is what makes the Flexbook such a unique laptop, because it can alternate between being a laptop and a tablet, much like the Microsoft Surface, but with the advantage of a massive 17.8 inch screen in the form factor of a 13 inch laptop.

Another win for the Flexbook is in the way Daehnert cleverly designed it. With an inward folding screen, like the Samsung Galaxy Fold, the Flexbook tends to leave a gap in its center, so as to protect the screen from breaking. That gap is reinforced by the Flexbook’s keyboard, which helps give the screen something to fold around, preventing it from creasing or damaging with overuse. Designed to look less as a limitation and more of a design feature, the Flexbook’s flexible display has a unique way of wrapping around the keyboard. It even packs a Microsoft Surface Pro-style hinge to open and close at any desired angle.

Daehnert’s Flexbook may be a concept, but it does illustrate an interesting possibility for laptops. Armed with a stylus, USB-C ports on both sides, and 4 speaker units arranged around the bezel of the screen, Daehnert’s Flexbook is a render I secretly wish was a leaked image. My only concern is the slight offset when you fold the keyboard backwards and try to rest the Flexbook on a flat surface like a table… but other than that, this might be just the best place to fit a flexible display. If anything, it should last longer too, because the average person opens their laptop less than 10 times a day, but looks at their smartphone more than 80 times a day. I should know… I’m that person.

Designer: Jonas Daehnert

The Samsung Galaxy Stick smartphone has a rolling display like LG’s TV!

Posted on 25/06/2019 by Sarang Sheth

Now while this isn’t an official Samsung concept, I can’t help but really wish it was one! Combining technologies that aren’t outside the realm of possibility, the Samsung Galaxy Stick makes perhaps the best use of a flexible display. It rolls it up into a smart, dynamic scroll, making the Samsung Galaxy Stick perhaps the most interesting smartphone concept of 2019.

The scroll-esque screen is a hat-tip to Samsung’s advancements in flexible OLED displays, and when not in use, it rolls right up into the phone’s slim, hollow, wand-like body. When you need the display, it promptly comes rolling out, turning the wand into a usable smartphone, with a nifty flexible touchscreen that maintains rigidity when unfolded. The Galaxy Stick even packs a secondary slimmer display on its body, to be used for more functional elements like calls, messages, battery indicators, etc. The secondary touchscreen is permanent, showcasing notifications when the flexible screen is rolled in, and even houses an in-screen fingerprint sensor for unlocking your smartphone.

The only caveat of this piece of sheer innovative design is the fact that the Galaxy Stick packs only one primary camera on its back… a drawback that shouldn’t really be a problem, considering the Galaxy Stick sets out to solve more pressing problems, like creating a flexible-display smartphone that doesn’t crease, and that isn’t a massive brick. The rolling display format could make a pretty unique proof-of-concept. Obviously, this makes the phone incredibly vulnerable, given that the screen needs to be mounted on a delicate mechanism that helps it roll and unroll (not to mention the fact that three out of four sides of the Galaxy Stick, when opened, are an exposed OLED display with no protection). The second-most pressing problem is obviously that a smaller, more compact phone invariably means a smaller battery too, which in the case of the Galaxy Stick, isn’t enough. While phones are getting more and more powerful, batteries aren’t getting better, they’re just getting bigger… Until someone invents a more efficient and compact battery, the Galaxy Stick may remain just a concept, but don’t lose hope! Today’s concept is tomorrow’s proof-of-concept!

Designer: Pranab P Kumar

Louis Vuitton’s flexible-screen handbags are the definition of extra

Posted on 10/05/2019 by Engadget RSS Feed

With flexible screens being all the rage nowadays, more and more companies are building products touting the technology. But there's an unexpected one joining the craze: Louis Vuitton. The luxury brand has introduced a set of handbags that feature bu...

Louis Vuitton’s flexible-screen handbags are the definition of extra

Posted on 10/05/2019 by Engadget RSS Feed

The flexible FRAME pad is capable of being a tablet, laptop, AND a desktop

Posted on 06/04/2019 by Sarang Sheth

The flexible FRAME pad is capable of being a tablet, laptop, AND a desktop

It’s been roughly two years since the first time we saw a flexible-screen device (or imagined it) and to be honest, we still haven’t figured out WHY exactly we need one. The only conceivable answer seems to be that mobiles are running into a creative roadblock and flexible phones seem to be the only way out, but differentiation can’t be the only reason to add a bending screen to a gadget, no?

Designer Hyeong Seop Lee seems to have a pretty incredible use for bending displays. The FRAME is a flexible-gadget designed by Lee that uses OLED technology to serve many masters… because the FRAME is capable of being a tablet, a laptop, and even a desktop! With a flexible spine running right along the middle, the FRAME can be carried around folded much like a laptop. Open it out completely and you’ve got yourself a pretty big 15-inch tablet that’s great for multi-tasking, browsing, sketching, and watching movies on. Fold the tablet along its flexible spine and one half of the screen immediately turns into a touchscreen keyboard, giving you the ability to use the FRAME as you would a laptop. In its laptop mode, you can practically angle the display in any way, propping it up vertically just like you would a laptop screen, allowing you to alternate between tablet and laptop whenever you want-need.

When you’re looking for more firepower, the FRAME has the ability of becoming your all-in-1 PC. With a dock that allows it to stand vertically (while also supplying power to it), the FRAME becomes your very own desktop, allowing you to connect keyboards, mice, hard-drives, thumb-drives and even the occasional SD card to it (it even packs an audio jack), giving you all the benefits of a desktop in a gadget that also possesses all the merits of a laptop and tablet. With USB and HDMI ports on its side, along with a card-reader and audio jack, the FRAME is a no-holds-barred tablet. Factor in the flexible OLED display and the FRAME becomes a pretty remarkable laptop. Finally add the dock to the mix and the FRAME easily becomes the most versatile desktop in the world, allowing you to carry your data/work/entertainment with you, and giving you the sheer joy of having three completely different products in one singular design.

This article is also an open-letter to Samsung, which should clearly take some lessons from Lee’s design. Flexible displays are capable of being MUCH more than just a novelty. The FRAME proves it.

Designer: Hyeong Seop Lee

The flexible FRAME pad is capable of being a tablet, laptop, AND a desktop