Samsung hasn't given up on rollable phones, and its new ideas are wild

Samsung was one of the first major smartphone makers to bring foldable phones to the market with the Galaxy Fold. It wasn’t the smoothest of stories, but it led to the company’s hugely popular Z Fold and Z Flip series.

So what’s next after folding phones, you ask? How about phones with a rollable display? Yes, Samsung seems to be playing around with the idea of a phone with a screen that rolls out, according to a new patent it filed (h/t WearView).

Phones with rollable screens aren’t exactly new either. They have frequently featured at events like MWC and CES, and Samsung itself has displayed concept phones with a screen that slides out.

However, this new patent has some interesting ideas. Of course, it starts off simple with a phone that has a sliding display. According to the drawings submitted in the filing, this could look like a regular smartphone. However, you’d be able to pull at the screen and make it wider, so it’d resemble a Galaxy Z Fold 7 more than a Galaxy S26.

While that in itself is a fun thought to entertain, the other idea that Samsung filed is even more interesting. According to the diagrams in the patent filing, the idea is to have a phone with two parts that, when closed, hide the display entirely. This is to “reduce damage to the display module.” But pull at either end of the phone, and out slides a display! At least, theoretically.

Per Samsung’s description, the device will include sensors that will let it know how much of the display has been rolled out, the speed at which it was rolled out, and many other details that will undoubtedly help the phone display its UI, apps, and everything else properly.

Of course, this is just a patent filing right now. Companies file patents all the time for products that often never make it to production. It goes without saying that spotting this patent doesn’t mean that Samsung is actively working on a phone with a rollable display.

However, the ideas Samsung is clearly thinking about are nice, and having a phone that’s not a phone until you manually pull it apart is something I would love to see. They could even call it the Galaxy Z Roll’d.