Always seemingly 'bent' on destroying LG's fun, Samsung unveiled the curved-screen "Samsung Galaxy Round" smartphone recently, before LG could show off its bendable screen to the public. While seen as a novelty product by many, the Galaxy Round may be the first step away from boring slate smartphone form factors and towards the future. Here are its specs and release date.
The Galaxy Round, as the Verge reported, will be launching on SK Telecom in South Korea first. It features a 5.7-inch screen with 1080p resolution - much like the Galaxy Note 3 - but its curved along its vertical axis so that it wraps around your face when you're talking on the phone.
The phone is 7.9mm thick and weighs just 154 grams, despite its pretty large 2800 mAh battery. Like the Galaxy Note 3, it features a 13-megapixel camera and runs a quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, clocked at 2.3GHz with 3GB of RAM (it is now the second device, after the Note 3, to feature 3GB of RAM). It will run Android 4.3, with Samsung's TouchWiz UI layered over it.
There's no word about a release date outside of South Korea right now, but we do know it was released Oct. 9 there. It currently only comes in "Luxury Brown" but will feature more colors going forward.
The price? Pretty steep. For about $1,000 U.S. - or 1.09 million won - SK Telecom customers can get the curved-screen version of the Galaxy Note 3 (which is basically what it is). Here's a video from Samsung showing off the info pane that appears when you roll the phone towards you. That seems to be all Samsung has found to actually do with the curved screen so far, but expect more innovations to come.