New Tech Shout

There's a patent from Samsung that came up late December and it reveals that the company is still working on a dual display device that could end up resembling the Microsoft Surface Duo or Surface Neo. The essence of the new patent is the way the hinge is hidden from view and the screens get closer so that a zero seam approach is established. Samsung might have been waiting a bit longer with this concept and introducing a Galaxy Fold, but with their foldable, they only wanted to be first on the market.

Samsung's documents describe a method of connecting two electronic devices via a hinge to provide a larger display on a smartphone. Unfolding the device will trigger the bigger screen. As the Surface Duo showed when it was unveiled last fall, it is very hard to pull this off. To hide the mechanisms and make them more efficient, Samsung's hidden hinge relies on a magnet group. The patent demonstrates rotation on an axis of the contact point, linked with both sides of the handset. Here tubular structures seem key.

A new type of hinge makes open and close the dual display smartphone in different positions but also retains those positions. Thanks to this mechanism the back camera can also flip to the front side for taking selfies. The patent was filed in June 2019 so there will be no beef between companies before the Surface Duo. The main problem with a revolutionary hinge is that a lot of times it has to be tested until it proves it can actually work properly.