Samsung says it will launch a curved display smartphone in October

Samsung is continuing with its efforts to out-innovate the rest of the mobile industry after announcing that it will launch a smartphone with a curved display — a first for the industry — in Korea next month.

According to Reuters and the Yonhap News Agency, Samsung made the announcement at the launch of the Galaxy Note 3 in Korea today. DJ Lee, the company’s head of strategic marketing, said the phone will launch locally next month, but provided no further details of it, or an indication of whether it would become available overseas.

Samsung showed off curved-screen prototypes at CES earlier this year, and it has used the technology in some of its smart TV lines, but a phone sporting a curved screen would be quite a different prospect.

Last month, Samsung entered the smartwatch space when it unveiled the Galaxy Gear last month. Many believe Apple is preparing to launch a smartwatch of its own, so the Gear was seen in some quarters as Samsung’s effort to beat its US rival to releasing such a product first.

However, with the Galaxy Gear syncing only with Samsung’s latest devices — the Note 3 and Galaxy S4 — and relying on its parent to provide data, the smartwatch has been criticized as lacking features and not being ‘smart,’ which could indicate that it was indeed rushed to market.

It remains to be seen if a curved screen smartphone would be a similar effort to draw a line in the sand, or whether Samsung is preparing a genuinely innovative and game-changing new smartphone.

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