Samsung’s fourth curved display smartphone, the Galaxy S7 Edge, will be hitting stores March 11, but the market may soon see similar devices by manufacturers other than the Korean powerhouse, according to recent reports from ET News .
The Korean publication claims that many Chinese rivals including Huawei, Xiaomi and Vivo have plans to release their own curved display devices. A device by Vivo in particular, called the Vivo XPlay 5, may be announced as soon as March 1.
So far, Samsung has been the only manufacturer producing curved display devices of the specific Galaxy Edge design. However, in the wake of declining smartphone sales, Samsung has begun selling its curved display technology to other manufacturers for use on other smartphones.
Current devices to feature the curved display outside of Samsung’s Galaxy Edge line include the Blackberry Priv .
Samsung introduced the design in fall 2014 with the Galaxy Note Edge, which featured a curve on the right side of its display. Since then, the Galaxy S6 Edge and Galaxy S6 Edge + launched with curves on both the right and left side of the display. The updated design has proved to be more stylish than functional over time; however, it gave Samsung an opportunity to stuff its Edge devices full of stock Edge features, which has been popular among users.
Samsung has been able to showcase on its curved display devices, software technology, which allows devices to illuminate different colors when people call a handset and the handset is facing down.
The Galaxy S7 Edge includes new Edge features, such as the Task Edge, which allows users to add new shortcuts for productivity applications, and the Third Party Edge, which allows users to create Edge shortcuts for apps not made by Samsung.
But it remains to be seen how other manufacturers will utilize the edges of a curved display device. The BlackBerry Priv does not use the curve display as a functional feature, as the device’s highlighted functions are a retractable keyboard and the Android operating system.
The XPlay 5 by Vivo is expected to feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip and 6GB of RAM, according to ET News. There is no word on whether the Chinese manufacturer will add functional edge features to its device.
