Hardware

CES 2024: Samsung’s bigger, foldier, more rollable displays

Comment

Image Credits: Samsung

Consider this a preview of a preview. It’s an opportunity to take advantage of the brief Sunday morning news lull before the deluge kicks into full effect Monday. Tomorrow is, after all, when Samsung will host its CES 2024 press conference along with other big names like Sony and LG.

This weekend, however, the company is teasing a “new generation of products that can be folded inward and outward,” along with “monitor-sized” folding and sliding OLEDs. The former, fittingly, has been deemed the “In&Out Flip.” The last bit is a reference to its flip phone form factor and — one supposes — a bid to distinguish the tech from a popular hamburger chain and a less popular 1997 Kevin Kline film.

Image Credits: Samsung

The company will offer up more details on the technology at tomorrow’s presser, but from the sound of things, we’re in the proof-of-concept stage here. Oftentimes these devices are a bit of an evolutionary dead end, but Samsung did manage to kickstart the foldable phone craze a few years back, so stranger things have happened.

“In&Out Flip is a technology that can provide a new alternative for consumers who prefer bar-shaped smartphones due to the thickness of foldable products,” the company said in a release. “When folded outwards, both the front and back of the product can be used as a screen, creating a new user experience.”

Image Credits: Samsung

The technology is effectively an attempt to reduce the need for the separate external displays found on the current generation of foldable devices. Among other things, removing that secondary screen would slim down the product’s profile.

As for testing the tech, Samsung apparently utilized the device in temperatures ranging from –4°F up to 140°F. The team dunked the screens in water, rubbed sand on them and bounced basketballs on their surface, which sounds like a pretty good time, if I’m being honest.

A rollable display is also being shown off in Vegas this week. The technology appears on the Rollable Flex, as well as the Flex Hybrid, the latter of which combines it with a sliding display. Also at the event is an unnamed earbud case with a built-in display. No word on when — or if — such products might hit the market, but I wouldn’t bank on an appearance at the company’s upcoming Galaxy S24 event.

Read more about CES 2024 on TechCrunch

More TechCrunch

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 will be in San Francisco on October 28–30, and we’re already excited! This is the startup world’s main event, and it’s where you’ll find the knowledge, tools…

Meet Visa, Mercury, Artisan, Golub Capital and more at TC Disrupt 2024

Featured Article

The women in AI making a difference

As a part of a multi-part series, TechCrunch is highlighting women innovators — from academics to policymakers —in the field of AI.

45 mins ago
The women in AI making a difference

Ifeel is being offered as part of an employer’s or insurance provider’s healthcare coverage.

Mental health insurance platform ifeel  raises a $20 million Series B

Instead of opening the user’s actual browser or a WebView, Custom Tabs let users remain in their app while browsing.

Google Chrome becomes a ‘picture-in-picture’ app

Sanil Chawla remembers the meetings he had with countless artists in college. Those creatives were looking for one thing: sustainable economic infrastructure that could help them scale rather than drown…

Creator fintech Slingshot raises $2.2M

A startup called Firefly that’s tackling the thorny and growing issue of cloud asset management with an “infrastructure as code” solution has raised $23 million in funding. That comes on…

Firefly forges on after co-founder murdered by Hamas

Mistral, the French AI startup backed by Microsoft and valued at $6 billion, has released its first generative AI model for coding, dubbed Codestral. Codestral, like other code-generating models, is…

Mistral releases Codestral, its first generative AI model for code

Pinterest announced today that it is evolving its Creator Inclusion Fund to now be called the Pinterest Inclusion Fund. Pinterest teamed up with Shopify’s Build Black & Native program to…

Pinterest expands its Creator Fund to allow founders

Cadillac may seem a bit too traditional to hang its driving cap on EVs. And yet, that hasn’t stopped the GM brand from rolling out — or at least showing…

Cadillac’s new Optiq EV is designed to hook young hipsters

Alex Taub, a longtime founder with multiple exits under his belt, believes it’s time to disrupt the meme industry. “I have this big thesis that meme tech is going to…

This founder says meme tech is the next big thing

Lux, the startup behind popular pro photography app Halide and others, is venturing into video with its latest app launch. On Wednesday, the company announced Kino, a new video capture app…

Kino is a new iPhone app for videographers from the makers of Halide

DevOps startup Harness has shown itself to be an ambitious company, building a broad platform of services while also dabbling in M&A when it made sense to fill in functionality.…

Harness snags Split.io as it goes all in on feature flags and experiments

U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin will introduce a bill to Congress that would limit or ban the introduction of connected vehicles built by Chinese companies if found to pose a threat…

Chinese EVs – and their connected tech – are the next target of US lawmakers

Microsoft’s Copilot, a generative AI-powered tool that can generate text as well as answer specific questions, is now available as an in-app chatbot on Telegram, the instant messaging app.  Currently…

Microsoft’s Copilot is now on Telegram

HBO’s new documentary, “MoviePass, MovieCrash,” tells a story that many of us know about: how MoviePass, the subscription-based movie ticketing startup, was a catastrophic failure. After a series of mishaps…

MoviePass co-founders speak their truth in HBO’s new documentary 

The watch features a variety of different 3D games, unlocking more play time the more kids move.

Fitbit’s new kid smartwatch is a little Wiimote, a little Tamagotchi

In the video, a crowd is roaring at a packed summer music festival. As a beat starts playing over the speakers, the performer finally walks onstage: It’s the Joker. Clad…

Discord has become an unlikely center for the generative AI boom

After the Wirecard scandal, Germany’s financial regulator BaFin started to look more closely at young fintech startups that wanted to grow at a rapid pace — it’s better to be…

Germany’s financial regulator ends anti-money laundering cap on N26 signups after $10M fine

Among other things, this includes the ability to trace code from source to binary packages across both platforms, single sign-on support and unified project structures.

JFrog and GitHub team up to closely integrate their source code and binary platforms

The company’s public fund disbursement and e-commerce platform makes accepting school tuition and enabling educational enrichment more accessible. 

Tech startup Odyssey goes on journey to help states implement school choice programs

A new startup called Kinnect aims to help people privately save generational memories, traditions, recipes and more. The company’s app, launched this month, lets people create invite-only spaces where they…

Kinnect’s new app aims to help families record and store generational memories

Spotify has hiked its premium subscription in France by an eye-watering €0.13, in response to a new music-streaming tax.

Spotify hikes subscription price in France by 1.2% to match new music-streaming tax

The European Union has taken the wraps off the structure of the new AI Office, the ecosystem-building and oversight body that’s being established under the bloc’s AI Act. The risk-based…

With the EU AI Act incoming this summer, the bloc lays out its plan for AI governance

Solutions by Text, a company that gives people a way to pay their bills and apply for loans via text messaging, has secured $110 million in new growth funding. Edison…

Bootstrapped for over a decade, this Dallas company just secured $110M to help people pay bills by text

Owners of small- and medium-sized businesses check their bank balances daily to make financial decisions. But it’s entrepreneur Yoseph West’s assertion that there’s typically information and functions missing from bank…

Relay raises $32.2 million to help smaller businesses manage their cash flow

When other firms were investing and raising eye-popping sums, Clean Energy Ventures took a different approach. It appears to be paying off.

How Clean Energy Ventures avoided the pandemic bubble and raised a $305M fund

PwC, the management consulting giant, will become OpenAI’s biggest customer to date, covering 100,000 users.

OpenAI signs 100K PwC workers to ChatGPT’s enterprise tier as PwC becomes its first resale partner

Tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs, the clock is ticking! With just 72 hours remaining until the early-bird ticket deadline for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, now is the time to secure your spot…

72 hours left of the Disrupt early-bird sale

Avendus, the top investment bank for venture deals in India, confirmed on Wednesday it is looking to raise up to $350 million for its new private equity fund.  The new…

Avendus, India’s top venture adviser, confirms it’s looking to raise a $350M fund

China has closed a third state-backed investment fund to bolster its semiconductor industry and reduce reliance on other nations, both for using and manufacturing wafers — prioritizing what is called…

China’s $47B semiconductor fund puts chip sovereignty front and center