Samsung wants its future tablet to expand more smoothly, patent reveals

The company is serious about its next-gen tablet’s flexibility.

With Samsung releasing the latest devices in three product categories during its Unpacked event, the company is now working on its newest Galaxy Tab, which could come out with an expandable display, suggests the newest patent filed by Samsung.

The company’s recent patent issued by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) focuses on an updated scheme for a tablet’s expandable screen. According to the document, the new display could include “a flexible screen arranged on the shell.”

“The size of the display screen exposed to the outside of the flexible screen expands and contracts as the size of the shell expands and shrinks,” the operation principle of the future tablet is explained in the patent, first reported by Patently Apple.

What’s so revolutionary about the new scheme? The flexible screens of many foldable devices are fixed on “two mobile phone housings,” which are then connected. This structure is similar to a clamshell phone and thus doesn’t guarantee “the advantages of the flexible screen,” as “the expansion of the screen in those schemes is not free enough.” This means that users of such devices have to choose between using one or two screens and can’t choose the preferred screen size.

If implemented, the new structure proposed in the document could make the next-generation Galaxy Tab lighter and thinner, “capable of expanding and shrinking in two directions of the same plane synchronously.”

Speculations about Samsung’s future tablet have been on the rise for a while, as another patent has been filed that shows an expandable display that has to be pulled from both sides.