Samsung's foldable phone is here, with brand-new One UI for Android

Samsung's foldable phone is coming. Called the Galaxy X, Galaxy F, Galaxy Fold or Galaxy Flex, we now know a bit more than we did when Samsung first gave us a sneak peek at its foldable phone of the future at its annual developer conference in San Francisco this past November.

On Feb. 11, Samsung confirmed in a teaser video that it would announce? show off? its foldable phone on Feb. 20, the same day as the Galaxy S10 launch.

This Korean lettering spells out "The future unfolds."

This is exactly how much of the foldable phone we've seen in person: On Nov. 7, 2018, Samsung SVP of Mobile Marketing Justin Dennison pulled a prototype from his jacket pocket.

Fully opened, Samsung's foldable phone is about the size of a tablet. Samsung calls this screen technology the Infinity Flex Display.

Samsung said it shrank or completely redesigned several components to make the two hemispheres thin enough to comfortably carry.

Closed, it's the width of a regular phone.

Samsung also refreshed the look of the software that rides on top of Android, calling it One UI. You'll find it on Samsung phones going forward, including the foldable phone and likely the forthcoming Galaxy S10.

One UI only works with Android 9 Pie, and resembles some of Pie's design concepts. The Galaxy S9 Plus running Android Oreo is on the left; on the right you have a demo Galaxy S9 Plus with One UI on Android Pie.

Large, rounded rectangles form the main theme, and you can enable a dark mode.

The changes to multitasking are stark. Now apps are separated by panes you can flick through horizontally, rather than vertically. You can also tap an icon below to open an app or swipe up to see them all. There are a few similarities to iOS here.

The new look extends to menus and submenus.

Here's the update to Bixby Home, which you get to by swiping to the left from the home screen.

Although One UI is supposed to concentrate actions at the bottom of the screen, you still have to pull down from the top to see your notifications and quick settings.

Samsung's edge interface looks about the same as it does now, with rounded icons.

You can enable the dark theme in the settings.

If you want to ditch the onscreen navigation buttons, a submenu lets you use full-screen gestures. Hard-press where the home button should be. Swipe up on either side of the space to go back or open your recent apps.

One UI aims to give you options when you need them and declutter when you don't. For example, in the dialer here you see three navigation options at the bottom of the display.

Start dialing a number, and they disappear. Clear the number and they return to serve you.

Your contacts menu now groups people alphabetically, giving one more example of One UI's quest to update Samsung's phone navigation. 

What we don't see are all the ways One UI will work with a foldable phone's various screen sizes and orientations. For that, we have to wait.