Samsung might start producing phones with bendable screens as early as 2017

Five years after Samsung began teasing bendable screen smartphones, we may finally be seeing a prospective time range for their release. Sources that spoke with Bloomberg say two bendable devices may hit the market as early as 2017, and that they’ll be revealed at the next Mobile World Congress.

Bloomberg‘s sources mention two phones, both of which will use organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology. The first will fold in half like a book, and the second is expected to unfurl from a five-inch screen in to a tablet-mode display that could be as large as eight inches. Both of those purported models were hinted at in the slightly cringeworthy Samsung video below, posted in 2013.

The sources say that Samsung isn’t currently planning to release either bendable phone, which share the internal codename “Project Valley,” under the Galaxy S line.

Lee Seung Woo, an analyst at IBK Securities Co. in Seoul told Bloomberg that he thinks the information from these sources will likely prove accurate.

“Next year is a probable scenario. Their biggest obstacle was related to making transparent plastics and making them durable, which seems resolved by now.”

While the Samsung Galaxy Round was pegged as Samsung’s first flexible display smartphone in 2013, it had a solid body that made it impossible to actually bend.

Related reading: Hands-on with ReFlex, the flexible Android-powered smartphone developed by Queen’s University researchers

[source]Bloomberg[/source]