Samsung announced Tuesday the Galaxy Round, a 5.7-inch phablet with a curved super AMOLED display. The device is being introduced solely for the Korean market, and solely in "Luxury Brown," with more colors to be introduced "soon."
Because nothing says luxury like brown. After all, it worked so well for the Zune.
Samsung Galaxy Round
I kid, I kid Samsung! This marks a rare smartphone that Samsung announced without it being a reaction to either an Apple rumor or shipping device, and I'd like to offer my heart-felt congratulations for the technical achievement.
Apple has filed a few patents related to curved displays, but there have been no rumors of a curved-display iPhone model at all. Then again, I don't expect people to be lining up for the world's only curved display smartphone now that it's here.
Anyway, the Galaxy Round is 7.99mm thick and it weighs 154 grams. The display is "Full HD," though I'm not sure of the specific resolution. It's likely to be impressive, however. It will run Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, has 3GB of RAM, and come with either 32GB or 64GB of storage. It will be powered by a 2.3GHz processor.
Samsung released a video on YouTube (below) showing the Roll Effect that is unique to this device.
It will be interesting to see if a curved display like this finds adherents. It's hard to see, but that could be because no one has done it before. It could be a natural fit with our eyes and hands, or it could be...weird.
Hopefully Samsung will introduce this for the U.S. market at some point as I'd like to see what it's like.