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Samsung’s foldable smartphone could be named “Galaxy Fold”, trademark reveals. The trademark for the Galaxy Fold name has popped up on tmdn.org website on November 28, and it is now making the rounds. Interestingly enough, this patent was filed in Turkey, though a patent with a similar name has also surfaced in the UK. The timing of this trademark is kind of perfect for the company’s foldable smartphone, as the device is rumored to launch in early 2019, as the company has already shown off the demo unit of the device during its developers conference. Not only is the timing of this patent perfect, but the name as well, the “Galaxy Fold” is a name for a consumer device which is powered by Android, as it has the “Galaxy” name in it, and the “Fold” part can really symbol only one thing, some sort of a foldable device. This patent does not really share any additional info regarding the device, though, but it does signal that the launch of the device could be near.
Background: The company has demoed its foldable smartphone during its developers conference recently, though the phone was obstructed by a heavy case, so we didn’t really get to see its looks, and it seemed like it has huge bezels because of it. The company’s foldable smartphone is expected to sport considerably thinner bezels, and Samsung will hopefully resolve some issues that popped up during the developers conference, the main one being the fact that it takes a long time for the phone to switch from the main display, to the smaller one once you fold it. The device that Samsung showed off actually has two displays, one huge one on the front, and a small one on one side of its back, which activates once the device is folded.
The Galaxy Fold will ship with Samsung’s One UI skin, on top of Android, while it is rumored to cost around $2,000. That is a hefty price tag, and it remains to be seen how accurate are those rumors. The device is expected to weigh around 200 grams, and it is expected to ship with 512GB of internal storage, and high-end specs in general. Samsung is planning to release a foldable smartphone, a smartphone with a flexible display which can be folded, but it won’t be the first such device. The Royole FlexPai got announced quite recently, and it is actually the very first such device, though it probably won’t be even close to Samsung’s offering in a number of ways.
Impact: Samsung is not the only company who is planning to release a foldable phone in 2019, OPPO will do the same, and so will LG and Huawei. LG is actually rumored to do that during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January, while Huawei will probably do it in the first quarter as well, same goes for OPPO. All in all, we’ll see quite a few foldable devices next year, and it remains to be seen which one of them will capture the essence of a foldable smartphone the best, as such a device not only needs to offer the right design, and work properly, but it also needs to be the right dimensions, in other words, it is not allowed to be too thick.
