Samsung's long-rumoured foldable smartphone might soon debut.
Information about the phone, often dubbed the Galaxy X, has been slowly leaking out over the past couple years, with the latest reports indicating that the company is developing a version that is able to fold out and transform into a 7-inch tablet. Now, a new report from ET News said Samsung is planning to start production of a prototype of the foldable smartphone, with the goal of launching it soon after.
The Korean media is claiming Samsung will have it ready for show in Q3, around the time that an OLED iPhone 8 may be announced. Samsung will be monitoring the quality of the prototypes internally before producing a consumer version of the phone, which could launch sometime toward the end of 2018. That means the prototype may show up at IFA 2017, which is set to kick off in early September.
However, previous rumors said a commercial model would release in the third quarter of the year. The Korea Herald even Samsung may roll out more than “100,000 units of fold-out devices” later on this year. It's unclear when the finished model will actually debut, but keep in mind it is not uncommon for Samsung to demo tech first. For instance, it first showed off a flexible OLED screen at SID 2016.
Before being known as the Galaxy X, Samsung’s folding phone had the code name Project Valley.