If there’s one company that told us for years that it wants to make foldable smartphones, it’s Samsung. It’s certainly not the only one, but it is the only company rumored to release at least one foldable flagship this year. A new report from Asia indicates that Samsung may already be working on two differently sized such devices.
Dutch site TechTastic picked up chatter on Weibo about two unreleased Samsung devices, codenamed SM-X900 and SM-X905. These are believed to be foldable devices that might be called Galaxy X1 and Galaxy X1 Plus. Apparently, these two devices are tested running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and Android 7.1.1 Nougat, respectively.
That said, there aren’t any details available about any of them. We don’t have any images or specs for the phones, and it’s not known when Samsung will announce them — or if it’ll happen this year.
What’s also somewhat puzzling is that Samsung would make two distinct sizes. Foldable smartphones would let the user switch between a compact and a large display format — or between a smartphone and tablet mode. But would we even need small foldable phones and large foldable phones? That remains to be seen.
There’s no denying that Samsung is innovating, at its own pace, in the mobile landscape. The company was the first to make big-screen smartphones popular with its Galaxy Note family and made curved displays look amazing with its Galaxy S6 edge and its successor, after failing to generate any real interest around the Galaxy Round curved smartphone. And, from the looks of it, Samsung may be first to market with a foldable smartphone.
