(Credit: Samsung)
The rumors were spot on. On Tuesday, Samsung announced the Samsung Galaxy Round, which it's proclaiming as the world's first (deeply) curved display smartphone.
What the heck does that mean? I'll tell you. It means that instead of the slight vertical bend we saw in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Samsung Nexus S, this smartphone features a horizontal curve, like a half smile. It's different -- and it'll come out in Korea first in brown, with flashier colors (and perhaps more markets) coming out later down the line.
Samsung has been working on its curved display for some time, showing off Youm (as said curved display is called) at CES 2013, and various other iterations in the years before.
Previously, the curved display technology -- which is a different thing than actual curved glass like Corning's Willow -- has been a project without actual physical form. In other words, the flexible display technology ghost has long existed before the technology has a body.
Design and build Luckily for Samsung, the Galaxy Round hangs out with the high end crowd. It has a 5.7 inch 1080p HD display, runs Andoid 4.3 (with Samsung's Touch Wiz interface, of course), and has Samsung's big-phone staples like multiwindow (think split screen) and one-handed operation mode, just like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3.
With dimensions similar to the Note 3, the Round is slim: 0.3-inch thick and weighs 5.4 ounces, which should feel substantial for its size, without weighing you down.
Additional features The most eye-catching and unique feature is that huge curve, that eyeful of a smile that's unmistakably laughing at you for ever doubting it in the first place.
Samsung includes two very new features, one called 'roll effect,' which we know little about. Samsung says it will easily display the date, time, missed call and battery information even when the home screen is in sleep mode. Samsung has attempted a similar-sounding ticker before, especially in the Samsung Galaxy Continuum, which displayed a running digital display below the main screen. It isn't exactly clear how this will play out on the Round.
Another new Samsung feature, the 'gravity effect,' promises to expand the role of gestures by tilting the device to see a music-focused interface that highlights your tunes.
Seemingly gunning after HTC, the Bounce UX, as it's called, turn on music player shortcuts even while the screen is off. While the player is going, pressing one side of the screen plays the previous track or the next, and uses tilt controls to trigger video playback.
It sounds logical, but also a little confusing for people who have to remember to use it in the first place.
Cameras and video Like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3, the Galaxy Round has a 13-megapixel camera with autofocus and flash , plus a 2-megapixel camera up front. Also look for 1080p HD video capture, which is standard on higher-end Samsung smartphones.
Performance The Galaxy Round features a 2.3 GHz MSM 8974 quad-core processor, 32GB internal storage, 3GB RAM (second to the Note 3), and an up-to-64GB microSD card slot. The 2,800mAh battery should amount for a fair number of running hours, but your battery longevity depends on how frequently you use your phone for heavy-duty tasks.
Pricing and availability So far, Samsung has announced the Galaxy Round for Korea in the brown shade, with more colors -- and hopefully more markets -- coming 'soon.'
Gimmick or something more? It still isn't entirely clear what the benefits are of a display that's so deeply horizontally curved like the Round. Maybe it'll fit your cheek -- or your pocket. Maybe it's because there's less surface area to shatter if you drop the phone and it lands on its face. Or maybe it's just because Samsung did and it can.
Either way, CNET is keeping an eye trained on the so-far-unpriced Samsung Galaxy Round and will share some hands-on experiences with the unique device as soon as we humanly can, fun little software addenda and all.
In the meantime, share your own view in the comments below. Is a deeply curved display wonderful and future-thinking, or frivolous and unimportant? Would you like to try it out? We'd love to hear from you.
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