Samsung building a foldable phone, LG on transparent screens

Samsung and LG on for BIG things!!

Samsung is releasing the occasional flip smartphone, but those are niche products with limited availability and appeal. A Samsung official revealed that the company has a plant to leverage its bendable display technology to create foldable phones.

The official did not provide any more info though if a foldable, flip phone like form factor can be used to provide a large screen in a compact body. While that may sound futuristic, we may see it as early as next year.

The new flexible screen tech has four phases: curved, bent, foldable and rollable. The first two are already a reality, the third one is coming soon while the last one holds promise of displays that are stored like roller blinds.

LG Display has its flexible screens too, though its focus is elsewhere – the company is experimenting with transparent displays. Those will enable augmented reality displays without the need for Google Glass style wearables.

LG already has a promotional prototype ready, however, "it will take some time" until the factories are ready for mass production. The tech is already is some products like luxury cars (for heads-up displays) and refrigerators (to let you see what's inside while showing ads too).

Anyway, there's one transparent display phone that we can think of, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness. Of course, that one had a tiny, low-res, monochrome display and never drew much attention from consumers.

LG is much further ahead than that - the image above is an 18" LG display that's both transparent and bendable.

htc one e9 specs

Official images and specs of the HTC One E9 leak in China, device touts a massive camera ring and Quad HD display

HTC China has an event for the media set to run from March 11th to March 17th, and though we don't know for sure what it'll be all about, we have a pretty good guess: the HTC One E9. And now, Chinese regulatory authority, TENAA, has added images and some specifications of the device to its database.

Yes, you read that correctly – One E9, not One M9 – meaning that HTC is sort of sticking to the strategy it first put in motion with the HTC One E8/M8, which oversaw the creation of nearly identical devices, save for the used body materials and the camera. From what we're seeing, the approach with the One E9 will be similar, but not identical. Said otherwise, we again have a seemingly different body (metal frame plus plastic?), and quite the conspicuous camera ring on the back, but the rest of the specs sheet differs greatly.

Other specifics we learn from the listing are the One E9's screen size – it will tower the M9 with a considerably larger, 5.5-inch display, which will also be crisper with a resolution of 1440 x 2560. Powering the E9 will be an octa-core MediaTek processor (likely the MT6795) and 3GB of RAM. The device will come in a choice of colors (black, white, and gold) is also listed with support for 2 SIM cards and a 2,800 mAh cell. That would give the E9 a slightly smaller battery capacity than that of the M9, but that can be explained with its much thinner profile, which will sit at 0.3 inches (7.54 mm). As for height and width, those measure 6.16 x 3.01 in (156.5 x 76.5 mm) respectively.

Again, this is kind of similar to what HTC did with the One E8/M8, though we do have to wonder what it's planning for the rear camera this time around. Indeed, with the previous generation, HTC fitted a 13-megapixel camera with the E8 – stark contrast to the 4-megapixel UltraPixel unit of the M8. With the new One M9 sporting a 20-megapixel snapper, however, it begs the question what HTC has in mind for the E9.