Folding displays are so 2021; Samsung shows of a display that folds and slides

Folding displays are so 2021; Samsung shows of a display that folds and slides

The annual Consumer Electronics Show typically isn’t a very mobile-focused event; instead it looks at more home and general technology even though some of the big mobile brands are at CES in force. Samsung is one such brand and typically uses CES to launch things like TVs, but this year it has shown off an interesting concept for a mobile display that both unfolds, and also slides out.

This rather magical-looking Samsung Display deformable OLED is called a Flex Hybrid, and is essentially a tablet where a third of the display unfolds to the left, and a further third can be extended out to the right when required. Without the slide-out section, the tablet is a 10.5-inch screen, but it can extend to a 12.4-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio which is better for watching movies, TV shows and the like.

This technology is just screaming out to be included in an upcoming mobile device, and the fact that Samsung has a demo ready showing the technology says it isn’t far away.

Samsung also has a couple of concept devices with slide-out displays on one or both sides, which builds on preview technology shown off at CES 2022. In this case, the Slidable Flex Solo / Duet devices show what a 13-inch tablet which can expand to 17.3-inches might look like, allowing for a more compact device when needed, and expanding out to a much larger one for multi-tasking or consuming more detailed content.

What I’d really like to see is a 7-inch tablet that can expand out to 10-inches, as I feel those are kind of the magic numbers of tablet usability; anything smaller is basically a phone, and anything bigger than 10-inches is really an edge use case for all but few.

When will we see a new foldable from Samsung using this new tech? Given how quickly it progressed from demonstrating foldable screens to having them in users hands, I’d suggest it might be a year away if that.