The Samsung Galaxy X will be a revolutionary device, but it won't be amazing
Samsung needs to hurry its ass up and get truly foldable and flexible OLED display devices to market sooner rather than later. And I specifically single out Samsung because it's the market leader for OLED generally, and flexible OLED specifically - it has the biggest flexible OLED production capacity, the most financial and R&D investment into the technology, and the longest term of development experience with it too; it has, after all, been tinkering with and saying it will do something with flexible OLED for at least the last five years. Probably longer if you factor in time before that where it was likely working on prototypes but keeping quiet about it.
My reasons for saying that a truly folding OLED phone is urgently needed surround the fact that the market is starting to stagnate, and differentiation between brands has trailed off quite significantly.
In other words, the industry needs a boot up the backside, a fresh, shiny, flexible OLED boot that can introduce entriely new form factors and designs.
The iPhone-like slab shape is now ubiquitous, and has been for some time, and now metal and glass design has reached the same level too.
My reasons for saying that a truly folding OLED phone is urgently needed surround the fact that the market is starting to stagnate, and differentiation between brands has trailed off quite significantly.
In other words, the industry needs a boot up the backside, a fresh, shiny, flexible OLED boot that can introduce entriely new form factors and designs.
The iPhone-like slab shape is now ubiquitous, and has been for some time, and now metal and glass design has reached the same level too.
So with all that said, you might think I'd be really excited about the prospect of the Samsung Galaxy X finally breaking cover inside 2018, as it is rumoured to, and becoming the first truly flexible and folding OLED display device on the market.
Well I am, in a sense, but as the title suggests, I also don't think it'll be all that exciting either.
Why? Well for starters it's been established by the rumour mill that it'll be a "test bed" device; it'll likely have a limited run of about 100,000 units which will only see distribution in South Korea.
There's a precedent for this as well; Samsung did exactly this with the Galaxy Note EDGE, the first device featuring flexible OLED ever. Here it was implemented in the now-familiar curved edge screen configuration under fixed glass. That phone only had one edge curved as a proof-of-concept, it launched alongside the Galaxy Note 4 in late 2014, but again, was only available as a small Limited Edition batch in Samsung's home country.
It wasn't particularly exciting either; you couldn't get hold of it, but even if you could, there wasn't much special about it because it was just meant to test the idea out rather than really showboat about it.
Evidently the feedback was positive though - the test bed was successful - because Samsung then went on to produce the Samsung Galaxy S6 EDGE in 2015 and has been producing curved edge OLED screened phones ever since. In fact now with the Galaxy S8 series and Galaxy Note 8, Samsung doesn't have any flat screens in its flagship portfolio; curved displays are the norm.
So, I'm basically expecting the same with the introduction of true flexible form factors using flexible OLED, which the Samsung Galaxy X is supposed to be the beginning of. By most accounts from the rumour mill, the design of the Galaxy X is pretty simple - just as the Galaxy Note EDGE's was.
Where the Galaxy Note EDGE was just a Galaxy Note 4 with one edge curving round, the Galaxy X is apparently much like an old-school clamshell phone which can become more compact in your pocket, but when folded out has a full touchscreen which folds along the middle.
This is cool, but it's not living up to the full potential of what makes truly folding and flexible OLED so exciting in terms of injecting some much-needed change, innovation and excitement into the industry; a clamshell, after all, feels like something of a step backwards, though some who are tired of 6in screens stretching their pockets might welcome the idea, it must be said.
The really excting prospect is something more along the line of your standard-looking 5in phone which can fold out into a much bigger tablet-sized device, rendering redundant the need for tablets or phablets, and turning people's phones into true all-in-one devices.
If Samsung's past examples are any measure, this won't happen until Samsung gets the kind of positive feedback it needs from the test bed Galaxy X device, so we're looking at another cycle before it hits the "mainstream" so to speak and does what the Galaxy S6 EDGE did.
I'd say that's likely going to happen in 2019, although if I'm being generous (and some rumours do support this idea) we could see something clever on the Galaxy Note 9 in late 2018.
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