Samsung to show off Z-folding foldable, rollable, and more this week

Samsung is unarguably the leader in the foldable phone space at the moment, gaining a head-start on rivals and offering two very different form factors. So you have to wonder what else the company could bring to the table.

Now, Samsung Display has announced that it will be showing off a variety of innovative wares at the Display Week 2021 online exhibition taking place from today (h/t: SamMobile‘s Danny Dorresteijn)

The designs on show include an S-folding (or Z-folding, whichever you prefer) foldable phone, a rollable phone akin to LG’s canceled device, a 17-inch folding display, and an under-display camera on a laptop. Check out a gallery of all the designs below.

The S-folding foldable offers a 7.2-inch screen when folded out, but folding the device twice results in a more conventional smartphone form factor. We also see a thick bezel on the left-hand side of the device when unfolded, hosting the cameras and giving you an area to grip the device.

Staying with the smartphone-style concepts, Samsung Display’s “slidable” or rollable design doesn’t seem all that different from LG’s device. The screen extends from the right-hand side, giving you a little more screen real estate to work with.

Meanwhile, the 17-inch folding display seems to offer an out-folding experience, and Samsung Display says it offers a 4:3 tablet screen when folded and a large monitor of sorts when unfolded.

Loading poll

Finally, Samsung’s display arm says it will also show off an under-display selfie camera on an “IT device” or laptop. The firm says this tech is enabled by “increasing the transmittance” of the screen area where the camera is located. This seems like an interesting way to offer a bezel-less screen on a laptop, but I do wonder about picture quality when laptop cameras are notorious for awful images and video quality to begin with.

In any event, all of these designs seem like rather interesting ideas, and could perhaps give us a hint of what to expect from Samsung itself in 2021 and beyond.

What would you like to see come to market in 2021? Let us know by taking the poll further up the page.