Samsung demonstrates Galaxy Z Flip prototype with 360-degree hinge

Samsung has a unique Galaxy Z Flip foldable prototype on show at CES 2024, featuring a 360-degree hinge.

The South Korean tech giant held its big CES press event recently, but as ever, some of the most interesting stuff is to be found on the showroom floor and away from the official press releases.

Take this fascinating prototype for example, which we come to via Android Central, and which Samsung is calling the ‘In&Out Flip’. It looks an awful lot like a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, albeit with much chunkier bezels. The big difference is that there’s only one display, and that said display can be folded in half completely in either direction.

There’s no need for a separate cover display when the main internal display can become external with a quick rotation.

We should stress that this Samsung In&Out Flip is very much a prototype, and that there’s no guarantee it’ll ever make its way to production. When and if it does, we suspect that it’ll look much more refined than this chunky model.

The potential is clear, however. Such a streamlined foldable phone could potentially be much thinner than the current Flip range, thus addressing one of the big complaints about current foldables.

You would have to suspect that there’d be more space for a decent camera as a result. Scratch another persistent foldable problem off the list.

Now all we need is for Samsung to address those dust ingress issues, the visible crease, and the sky-high pricing, and we’re laughing.

Elsewhere, Samsung has the Rollable Flex on display, which appears to be a foldable tablet that also rolls out to five times its original surface area. We’ve seen and heard of such rollable prototypes before over the years, but it’s interesting to see that Samsung has stuck by the idea.