Samsung’s foldable phone might actually, finally launch this year

Waiting for Samsung’s foldable phone has been like waiting for the Yeti: You see a blurry, probably fake photo here and there, but the real thing never seems to show up. 

But this year might be different.

This is according to Samsung’s CEO of mobile DJ Koh, who told CNBC that it’s “time to deliver” this long-awaited device. 

That phrase is intentionally vague — CNBC says Koh declined to say whether the foldable phone will be launched this year, but he did say Samsung has “nearly concluded” the “complicated” development process for the phone. 

Koh spoke about the phone in broad terms — saying, for example, that “every innovation should have a meaningful message to our end customer” — but shared no specifics. More details could be unveiled in November, during the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco, Koh said. 

A foldable phone would be a nice change in today’s world, dominated by soap-shaped smartphones. But rumors about a Samsung foldable phone have been around at least since 2008, when Samsung teased a folding OLED display, and have been more or less steady since. We wrote about it in 2015, and the launch seemed imminent every year since. Sure, it might finally happen this year or the next, but forgive me if I remain skeptical until the news is official.

Samsung is not the only company teasing a foldable phone. China’s Oppo showed a prototype in 2016, and Lenovo had a few concepts of its own that same year.