We’re in the middle of an arms race at the top end of the phone market, with Samsung, Google, Huawei and others all vying for the most striking foldable design. But if the rumors are to be believed (and yes, that’s a big ‘if’), Samsung is working on a rolling screen phone that will bring science fiction to the real pockets of your life.
Samsung is rumored to be bringing the Rollable Flex OLED concept display it showed off in 2023 to a mass-market design. Korean news outlet The Elec says this phone would start with a typical ‘candy bar’ form factor, but would roll out to a huge 12.4-inch screen. That’s about the same size as an iPad Pro, in a gadget that fits in your pocket (assuming you’re wearing men’s pants, at least).
The phone is said to launch in the second half of 2025, which would put it in the same general rollout as the next-generation Galaxy Z phones, presumably the Z7 Fold and Z7 Flip. The only other shared detail is that it uses the under-display camera that the Z series has flaunted for generations.
Foldable phones are still a small part of the market, despite the category being more than five years old. Blame it on prices climbing toward the $2,000 mark, and users hesitant to fork out that much money for a device that’s inherently less durable than a conventional smartphone. The leak shows that Samsung is especially disappointed with the sales of the Galaxy Z6 and S24 series. Again, that could be could just be have something to do with phones that cost more than a month’s rent.
Still, Samsung needs to stay in the high-end status symbol market, if only to keep up appearances. Besides the usual cut-throat competition with the iPhone, the shine also comes from the Z Fold series. Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold is slightly thinner and Huawei currently has the crown for stunning presentation with the triple-folding Mate XT and its 10.2-inch screen. Samsung needs a new, ambitious device, the phone equivalent of a Nissan GT-R, to get people excited about the brand and the cheaper devices where the real sales volume and money resides.
And Samsung is certainly equipped to make that swing. It is the largest company in South Korea, with its Display division regularly competing for the most advanced technology on the market, even supplying millions of screens per year to its competitors. Remember, most iPhones you see have a Samsung OLED panel in them.
But this is still a big risk. This kind of form factor would pose enormous technical challenges on the way to a retail product, especially getting a usable battery for a tablet-sized screen into a phone-sized frame. Disappointing split battery performance is still one of the big weaknesses of Samsung’s sixth-generation foldable phones. The 2023 concept display used a motorized frame to show the rolling action, with no hands-on demonstrations available. Who knows if that will result in a final design.
So even if this rumor is true, there’s a good chance that Samsung will have such problems developing the device that it will miss the 2025 release date, or just be scrapped altogether. But even as someone who waits a generation or two before buying new technology, I can’t deny that I’m excited. I literally dreamed about a device like this, a phone-sized thingamabob that converts and rolls out into a laptop-sized display. I hope it’s real, and I hope Samsung can make it a retail reality.