This week's Apple X announcement has many bank accounts on an extreme diet. Not to be outdone, Samsung preceded Apple's livestreamed keynote event with a bold announcement of its own. According to current estimates, Samsung Electronics' mobile business boss Koh Dong-jin revealed Tuesday, a smartphone equipped with a foldable display will be released in 2018.
"As the head of the business, I can say our current goal is next year," Koh Dong-jin said at Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 press conference, Bloombergreported. "When we can overcome some problems for sure, we will launch the product." Those problems, potentially, will revolve around the difficulty of mass-producing the new display. The device is expected to be released as a new Galaxy Note model.
Samsung has been teasing the foldable leap since at least 2013, and their latest comments leave room for the launch to be delayed. The original prototype, which utilized YOUM flexible display, was first unveiled during that year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:
With the latest update on their bendable progress, Samsung has received a fair amount of ribbing via tweets. Some of the ribbing, predictably, was Apple-related:
At any rate, the Galaxy Note 8 rollout is going well. In South Korea alone, Samsung received 650,000 preparers for the device ahead of its Friday release. Also, for everyone complaining about the iPhone X running $999 and up, consider this: The Note 8 starts at $930.