Samsung is secretly showing off a new “rolling” screen smartphone at the CES 2020 tradeshow in Las Vegas, according to industry rumblings.
The phone is reportedly being shown off to an elite group of tech movers and shakers at the show in a secret Samsung meeting room, according to ET News. The report suggests the phone has a custom “rolling screen” and “slide out” display.
Sadly it doesn’t go into any specific detail about how the two elements combine, or what specs the phone has. Samsung’s also not confirmed the news and at the time of publishing hadn’t responded to Trusted Reviews request for comment.
For now we’d take the report with a pinch of salt, as a result. Even if Samsung is showing off a secret rolly phone, it’s probably a concept design, rather than full on consumer product.
CES is a buyers conference full of pre-release hardware that’s not ready for the public eye. Companies regularly use it to show off new tech to potential customers.
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Given the fact that we haven’t heard any rumblings from other press at the show, it’s likely the tech, if it’s there, is just being shown to other OEMs Samsung hopes will pay to use it. We’ll update this article when we get more information either way.
Samsung has been experimenting with new phone designs over the last year. The company unveiled its first foldable, the Galaxy Fold, in February 2019. Despite a stuttered start full of technical issues, Samsung claims it’s shipped over 400,000 Galaxy Fold units to date.
The follow up Galaxy Fold 2 was expected to appear at CES, but was a no show, leading to speculation the firm may be done with foldables. But a source familiar with the matter confirmed to Trusted Reviews the company is encouraged by the response to the Fold and more models are likely. This makes it fairly likely the Fold 2 will appear at Samsung’s latest unpacked event in February, alongside its hotly anticipated Galaxy S20 family of phones.
The Galaxy Fold is one of many folding devices set to make an appearance this year. Motorola is also scheduled to launch its folding Razer Phone 2020. Numerous PC makers including, Lenovo, Dell and Microsoft are also working on folding laptop/tablet designs.