Samsung, smartphone with transparent display on the glass coming soon?

Samsung has filed a patent for one with the International Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) in the past few hours smartphone with transparent display on the back. To understand the concept you can try to think of an Always-on Display, in which only some key information is shown and the rest is completely black or off; in the Samsung patent, instead of black you can see the back cover.

The concept is not entirely new in the world of telephony: ZTE had tried it with a couple of smartphones in the past years, with Nubia X and Nubia Z20. But the implementation was much cruder: there was a traditional display, and it was covered with a more opaque glass cover that more or less recreated that effect. Samsung, on the other hand, is able to make real transparent panels: the first prototype had even shown it at the beginning of 2016, during the CES in Las Vegas.

Samsung speculates on several use cases for this technology. For starters, you could use the second screen as viewfinder for taking selfies with the main camera assembly, which is generally of superior quality; at the bottom you could find the controls and the various camera modes, at the top, next to the module, the preview. Then the user could customize the contents shown according to their needs.

Of course, it is impossible to tell if and when this idea will turn into reality – especially considering that large companies record dozens of inventions per week, few of which are actually implemented. But it is interesting to know that it is at least a possibility. Among other things, it is true that the smartphone shown in the patent is traditional in shape, but … It could be an interesting innovation even for a leafletdon’t you think?