Smartphones with curved displays are here. A day after LG confirmed that they are working on a curved OLED display for smartphones, Samsung has officially announced Galaxy Round which is available exclusively for SK Telecom in South Korea.
Samsung Galaxy Round has a 5.7-inch Full HD screen, very similar to what we saw in Galaxy Note 3, but with a curved OLED display. The immediate upsides for having a curved display on a smartphone is not known, but Samsung is promising lots of software tweaks to make use of the non-flat back of Galaxy Round. One such implementation can be seen in the video below. Tilting the phone on one side will show you the notifications, time and battery levels. Other tweaks include switching between home screens, which will feel like one continuous transition, and tilt-based interactions for the music and photos apps.
Samsung Galaxy Round is just 7.9mm thick and weighs 154g, slightly lesser than Galaxy Note 3. It packs LTE-A radios and will sport a 2800 mAh battery, a little lesser than what we saw on Galaxy Note 3. The camera is the same 13-MP snapper, and it’s powered by a 2.3GHz quad-core processor with 3GB of RAM. The Galaxy Round will run the latest Android 4.3 out of the box.
As for the price, SK Telecom has announced that Galaxy Round will be available in Luxury Brown for 1.09 million won which is about US $1,013. That’s a whopping price for a smartphone, but then it’s the first ever phone with curved OLED display, and hence expected to be sold at a premium till we see some competition. It’ll also be a while till Samsung ramps up the production of curved OLED screens & other components. Till then, this will be a price to cough up. Are you sold on the idea of curved displays for smartphones? Share your thoughts via the comments section below.
