Samsung patent shows rollable phone displays

Samsung is still figuring out how to release its futuristic Galaxy Fold, which is plagued with durability issues and without a release date. But that hasn’t stopped it from dreaming up new phone designs, including a compelling patent for a phone with a rollable display.

This patent discovered by Let’s Go Digital (via Gizmodo) shows off a phone that appears fairly traditional at a first glance. But it’s actually hiding a secret rollable display inside, and the top housing containing the selfie camera and earpiece seems able to extend outward from the phone, making for a screen that’s going off the charts when it comes to aspect ratio.

The phone in the patent looks vaguely like the BlackBerry Priv, except instead of exposing a handy QWERTY keyboard, you get a super tall screen that’s the size of a Rite Aid receipt. (We’re going to have to add this to our field guide on wacky, bendy phones.)

Rollable displays aren’t impossible. LG is bringing its rollable OLED display to market this year, and Corning says that it’s making progress on bendable glass for phones. Though, for what Samsung is proposing in its patent, we’re still likely years away from seeing tech like this come to phones.

Compelling as this patent is, there’s also the question of how durable a phone like this would even be, what with a sliding mechanism that could be as vulnerable to dust particles as the Galaxy Fold was. Moving forward, phones that incorporate a foldable display and moving parts will likely attract skepticism before excitement, but here’s to hoping that Samsung figures out a way to pull this one off, assuming this ever does make it to market. If it does, we’ll be one small step closer to the foldable phones from classic science-fiction movies and TV shows.