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Samsung's deeply bowed Galaxy Round (pictures)

What happens when you take a smartphone screen and bend it lengthwise? That's what Samsung found out in this seriously curved phone.

Jessica Dolcourt

Nov. 20, 2013 12:31 p.m. PT

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Curved Samsung Galaxy Round takes a bow

Samsung has made phones with slightly curved faces before, but we haven't seen anything like the Samsung Galaxy Round, which bends the actual AMOLED display technology lengthwise beneath the glass.

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Smile! Samsung's done something different again

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Smile! Samsung's done something different again

Samsung is no stranger to experimenting with smartphone form. You can see how deeply this Round arches when viewed from the top.

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Rock-a-bye

To take advantage of the phone's kinetic, rocking energy, Samsung added a feature that will show you the date, time, call details, and battery information when you rock the phone, even when it's in sleep mode.

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Bent, but not bending

It's important to distinguish that the Round may be able to rock like a cradle, but the phone itself is unyielding. It takes a lot more than flexible display technology to make a truly flexible phone.

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A curvier Note 3

High-end specs are very similar to the Galaxy Note 3's internals, including Android 4.3, a 5.7-inch 1080p HD screen, split-screen software capabilities, and 3GB of RAM.

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Backside

Like the Note 3, the Round uses faux-leather stitching on its backside.

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Take a shot

The curved screen won't affect your ability to snap photos and videos on the 13-megapixel camera and 1080p HD video camera.

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Legibility

There's still a question if the screen's slight bend will improve how well you can view photos, videos, and read articles indoors and outdoors. We'll be sure to dive into that.

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