The patent was unearthed by the Dutch rumour page, Let’s Go Digital, who found it submitted to the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) back in 2021. It envisions a Galaxy Z Fold smartphone with its foldable display technology wrapping around to the back of the phone like Huawei’s Mate X foldable smartphone. The catch to this foldable display? The foldable part of the display is built into the upper half of the phone and, when unfolded, forms an upside-down L-shape. According to the patent, the intended point of this design is to enable, say, the user to bring up the calendar or cloud storage app on the side, while conducting a conference call on the phone. Through this implementation, the L-shaped display would sidestep the typical picture-in-picture (PIP) functionality and instead, constantly keep the user constantly engaged in said concall. Design-wise, the extended part of the display would use the same Ultra Thin Glass (UTG), found in the Z Flip3 and Z Fold3, along with a special hinge and three magnets to prevent the display from detaching from the device accidentally. As with all patents, it is possible that such a device may never actually make it to the production line and, like most major tech giants, Samsung simply filed the patent to such a device to prevent its rivals from ever using such a concept. At least, not without paying them the necessary gratuity that comes as a prerequisite after filing such patents. (Source: Let’s Go Digital)
