Samsung promised us a smartphone with a curved display some time ago, and thanks to @evleaks, we get to see a render of it before the launch date.
The Korean company showcased its first bendable, yet unbreakable displays back in 2011, with the promise that it would include them in its future smartphones. Last year, we were shown again that making foldable OLED displays is possible, but neither this time were they implemented into a smartphone. Things changed at CES 2013, when Samsung unveiled a flexible OLED phone prototype that made a bit of sense. The image provided by @evleaks these days is of a smartphone with a curved display
Moments after @evleaks exposed the curved smartphone, the Korean company made an official announcement of Samsung Galaxy Round, aka world’s first smartphone with a curved display. Well, the first to be mass-produced, anyway.
The major selling point of the Samsung Galaxy Round is a FullHD (1920×1080) 5.7″ Super Flexible AMOLED. This might bring the Nexus S to mind, but that particular smartphone only had a curved glass above the leveled display.
Under the display, there is a a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC with quad-core Krait CPU running at 2.3GHz paired with 3GB of RAM. With such specs, this phone will be able to run smoothly anything you throw at it in the next few years.
As far as the storage is concerned, Samsung Galaxy Round comes with 32GB of built-in memory that can be furthermore expanded by adding a microSD card. That’s plenty of room for pictures and videos that are taken using Galaxy Round‘s cameras. The main camera has a resolution of 13MP, while the front camera only has 2MP.
The 2,800mAh battery might seem enough for a modern smartphone, but considering the size of the display, the CPU/GPU combo, and the common usage habits, people shouldn’t expect it to keep the phone alive for ever. Anyway, people have gotten accustomed to charging their smartphones daily, so that wouldn’t be much of a problem.
Software-wise, Samsung Galaxy Round will run Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, but there is no doubt that the device will get Android KitKat soon after.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIEExKSjWi4&feature=player_embedded
Above is a video of the Roll Effect, which enables Samsung Galaxy Round users to see the current day, time and various notifications such as missed calls or unread messages without lifting the phone from the table. In case it wasn’t obvious already, the target audience for this particular device is represented by businessmen. In my eyes, this is a nice feature that was implemented in the wrong way.
If you liked this post, please check the first announcement of Samsung’s smartphones with bendable displays and the foldable displays Samsung announced last year.
