Samsung's foldable phone is real and turns into a tablet

Samsung gave Wednesday a first glimpse of its next foldable phone, stating that it would be mass produced "in the coming months".

Justin Denison, senior vice president of mobile marketing at Samsung, introduced the phone: a tablet with full aperture, and then a phone at the closing. It uses a new display technology called Infinity Flex Display that allows you to open and close the device repeatedly without any degradation.

"The Infinity Flex display represents a whole new mobile platform," Denison said. "We live in a world where the size of your screen can only be the size of the device itself.We have added a new dimension to help you navigate, look and perform tasks like never before."

The foldable phone can run up to three applications at the same time, what Samsung calls Multi Active Window. A Google executive who spoke after Denison said that Android would support the new folding display technology.

Samsung made the announcement at its fifth annual developer conference on Wednesday and Thursday in San Francisco. The event, which had started modestly at a San Francisco hotel, has expanded in 2016 to Moscone Center West, where Apple had previously held its developer conference. Last year5,000 people attended the SDC.

The SDC reflects Samsung's efforts to encourage developers to create software specifically for its devices. Previously, this meant creating apps running at the edge of curved curved Samsung smartphone screens or taking advantage of its S Pen stylus. This year, the focus has been on Bixby and artificial intelligence.

Samsung continues the Holy Grail of a foldable phone since it marveled at CES 2013 with a flexible OLED display. The device comes at a difficult time for the mobile phone market. Apple and Samsung handset sales are slowing and the global smartphone market is in recession. Foldable phones could mark the next big innovation in mobile devices – as long as they are not too gimmicky.

D.J. Koh, CEO of Samsung's mobile business, said CNET in an interview in October you can use the device as a multitasking tablet before folding it into a more portable phone. He again stressed that the foldable phone would not be a "gadget" that "would disappear after six to nine months after delivery".

"When we deliver a foldable phone, it has to be really meaningful to our customers," Koh said last month.

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