Samsung to launch its foldable smartphone in November 2018: report

Samsung has been long rumored to be working on a foldable smartphone. But, new rumors and half-baked reports are pointing towards a potential launch date. Code-named 'Winner,' the smartphone is said to see the light of day at Samsung's annual developer's conference in November, reports The Korea Herald.

The San Francisco event is slated for November 7 and is said to run for 48 hours straight. The company is also expected to showcase the Galaxy Home in detail at the event. The new reports fall in line with company's mobile unit CEO DJ Koh tease a few days back. He said that the company would be unveiling its disruptive device by the end of the year, rubbishing rumors of an early 2019 launch.

However, you shouldn't expect the sales to kick-off anytime before 2019. Despite being a developer-oriented gathering, the developer's conference has witnessed a lot of consumer-facing products from Samsung. Last year, the company released Bixby 2.0, 360 Round camera, a plethora of VR apps, and SmartThings.

Industry insiders have claimed that Samsung has developed a new kind of adhesive just for the purpose of assembling foldable Android phones. Many industry giants have been poised to bring the first foldable smartphone to the table. Whoever does it first, would win a humungous media coverage, further going down as the first manufacturer to develop such a device.

Samsung's decision to push the launch to late 2018 could be a move to compete with its Chinese rival Huawei. Samsung has already lost to Huawei in bringing the triple camera setup to its flagship, and it seems the Korean company doesn't want history to repeat itself. It will be interesting to see which smartphone maker brings the first foldable smartphone to the table.

Besides, Samsung also won a new patent that aims to improve the camera of smartphones. The new patent adds a rotating mechanism which changes the way how a camera moves from the inside out.

Filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) under patent number US10070062, the application depicts how actuators and component pieces can be arranged in a way that allows the whole 'entire barrel' to tilt.