Samsung has been granted a US design patent for what might be its most unusual display concept yet.
The patent is for a device that, when folded, resembles a long rectangular brick and can unfold to form a much larger screen. It was filed in January 2023 and only granted this month.
So what does this Samsung patent actually show?
The patent, numbered US D1,130,402 S, has been granted to Samsung Display, the display arm of Samsung Electronics. It talks about the appearance of what it simply calls a “display device.”
Looking at the drawings, the device in its rolled state resembles a thick, elongated brick, with display panels wrapped tightly around the body. There’s a visible mechanism at one end as well. In their unrolled state, those same panels extend outward into what appears to be a significantly larger flat display.
The patent includes 14 drawing sheets showing the device from every angle, both in folded and unfolded states (via FixyFlow). Keep in mind that this is a design patent, one that only projects the look of the device. The drawings don’t tell us what materials it uses or how durable it is.
Does this mean Samsung is actually building a brick phone?
The appeal of packing that much screen into something pocketable could be real. That said, there is a very long road between a design patent filed in 2023 and an actual product you can buy.
Speaking from some experience, only a handful of such patents ever make it to the market. Samsung has been exploring foldable and rollable display options for years now. The new concept appears to combine them in a single device, but it doesn’t look like a well-thought-out product to me.
This one is worth watching, for sure, but don’t clear out your pocket just yet.