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

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.

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.”

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.