Samsung is reportedly developing a holographic smartphone display that could be used in a rumored 'Spatial iPhone'. The claims come from the leaker known as 'Schrödinger' on X, who shared screenshots of messages with an anonymous insider who is reportedly aware of the project. Sources have heard discussions of a 'Spatial iPhone' in the supply chain, although no reliable details have yet emerged.
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Since Apple doesn't manufacture its own displays, any such device would likely rely on other manufacturers like Samsung, which already supplies OLED panels for the iPhone lineup.
Codenamed 'MH1' or 'H1', the rumored display differs from previous glasses-free 3D displays by combining advanced eye tracking with refractive beam steering, a technique that uses tiny structures in the display layer to bend and redirect light towards the viewer's eyes at precise angles, creating the perception of depth without additional glasses.
The display is also said to incorporate a nano-structured holographic layer embedded directly into the AMOLED stack, allowing for spatial depth effects that appear to float above the glass surface. A proprietary algorithm will supposedly allow users to tilt the device to see around objects in a video, something the leaker described as '360-degree rotation', similar in concept to Samsung's existing 85-inch spatial displays but adapted for use on mobile devices.
Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) has been publishing academic work on thin-panel holography since 2020, when it released a paper in Nature Communications describing a directional backlight unit that increased viewing angles for holographic video by 30 times compared to conventional designs, a key hurdle in making the technology viable in a thin portable device.
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The prototype described at the time was about 1cm thick and was capable of displaying 4K holographic video at 30 frames per second. The H1 display is also said to maintain full 4K resolution for normal 2D tasks, with the holographic depth layer only activated for specific content, in what the leaker calls 'Zero Sharpness Loss', avoiding the image quality degradation associated with older lenticular 3D displays.
In a subsequent post, Schrödinger noted that the MH1 project remains in phase 1 of R&D, with the leaker pointing towards a roughly 2030 timeframe for widespread holographic smartphones.
The posts also say that 'Samsung is not alone' in its desire to release a holographic smartphone and cite supply chain rumors of an Apple 'Spatial iPhone' circulating among component suppliers. Samsung's advantage appears to lie in its manufacturing lead, with SAIT's published research forming the basis for what the H1 would attempt to produce.
Apple's interest in holographic and glasses-free 3D display technology stretches back nearly two decades. In 2008, Apple filed a patent application for a glasses-free autostereoscopic display that tracked the viewer's position to provide a personalized 3D image without special glasses, with Apple claiming that the system could accommodate multiple viewers at once.
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Schrödinger is a relatively new account with a limited but not insignificant history of Samsung hardware. The leaker has previously shared what appear to be internal documents and prototypes. Some predictions have been confirmed: in November 2025, Schrödinger claimed to have spent time with a Galaxy S26 Plus prototype, accurately revealing the Exynos 2600 chipset, 12GB of RAM, and One UI 8.5 software, all of which were confirmed at its launch in February.
