Your next smartphone could fold in half, according to Samsung!
Samsung announced on Tuesday, just ahead of the highly anticipated iPhone 8 event, that it plans to release a foldable smartphone in 2018.
“As the head of the business, I can say that we are targeting next year,” Samsung Electronics Chairman Ko Dong-jin said in an interview with The Associated Press. “When we can overcome some problems, we will launch the product.”.
There have been rumors that the company has been pursuing the release of a foldable phone since 2013, when it first began showing off prototypes at tech conferences and other events.
The Korean electronics giant is looking for new ways to stand out in an increasingly lucrative consumer technology market, and flexible phones aren't the only way. Samsung is also rumored to be looking to build an AI speaker to compete with the Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod. The company has been working on AI since 2016.
As it appears, the company will rely heavily on the Galaxy Note 8 to compete with the new iPhones by the end of the year.
In addition to a foldable phone, Samsung is also rumored to launch the Galaxy S9 in January. If the rumor is true, that means Samsung will be able to use a multi-layered attack against the new iPhone, which has a starting price of $999.
As always, we'll be watching these developments closely for any future releases from Samsung or its top competitors. Foldable phones certainly sound very interesting – but we wonder if they'll really be enough to distract us from all the new tech packed into the iPhone 8.
