samsung flex smartphone controls patent

The closest Samsung has come to releasing a flexible device so far is the Galaxy Round smartphone, but behind the scenes the company is working on a number of flexible and bendable OLED products. A new patent filing from the South Korean tech titan reveals a number of gestures we may one day use to control our squishy and stretchy devices.

First spotted by Patent Bolt, Samsung’s patents are meant to address the growing needs of smartphone users while also taking advantage of the company’s plans for future flexible smartphones. For example, by squeezing a device you could control the volume on a connected TV or automatically scroll on computer display.

In another example, Samsung describes a futuristic wristband display that could be controlled by “pushing, squashing or petting” manipulations. There’s also one sketch showing some sort of stretchable video game controller which looks like too much of a gimmick to actually be any fun. Stretching the device to maneuver a character onscreen might be interesting at first, but we can’t imagine this technology replacing a standard gaming controller any time soon.

Samsung first submitted these patents back in 2012, but there’s no word on when any of the devices described here will ever hit the market, if ever. Of course we don’t expect to be squeezing our stretching our smartphones anytime soon, but it’s always fun to see the whackier side of what’s going on inside a tech giant’s research and development offices.