For years and years, foldable screens teased us. They were absolutely a reality, but relegated to trade-show demos, still too temperamental and fragile for the real world. Thankfully, engineering caught up with the dream, and companies like Samsung managed to make folding phones a commercial reality. Now we’re hearing about possible plans to bring some next-gen folding tech to a new Galaxy phone by the end of 2023.
Existing Samsung foldables bend in one place. For the Flip, that’s a horizontal crease, while Fold models have a larger, vertical hinge. But as part of those look-what’s-coming-next demos of advanced foldable technology, Samsung has also shown off screens with an additional point of articulation, dividing the screen into three panels — basically, like the Galaxy Fold we know today, but a screen that opens up even wider. According to Yogesh Brar, Samsung may be rushing a new foldable model featuring this kind of screen to market.
Brar doesn’t offer a more definite timeframe — and honestly, even the pre-2024 estimate sounds uncertain — but he’s clear that he believes the company’s focus to be on its next folding phones. That could be at the expense of other development, and specifically, Brar shoots down the idea of Samsung working on a Galaxy S23 FE.
If true, that’s definitely sounding like a mixed bag. While we love the idea of pushing the envelope on foldables, especially considering how refined the Flip and Fold have gotten with their most recent generation, we would hate to see that happen at the expense of the next really great affordable Galaxy smartphone. These two considerations may be entirely independent, or just reflect current priorities — and none of this is to say that an S23 FE couldn’t take shape at some point further down the road.
We also have so many questions about just how practical a trifold design may be, and in particular the impact that kind of design threatens to have on handset thickness. For the moment, though, this is all very much an unsubstantiated rumor, and we probably shouldn’t get too ahead of ourselves in imagining what could go wrong.
