Most of the flexible display patents that we've seen from Samsung so far have been limited to bendable and foldable smartphones but a new patent application has been published by the US Patent & Trademark Office which suggests that future Gear smartwatches from Samsung might feature a rotary dial display.
Samsung introduced its rotary dial design with the Gear S2 and it retained it for the Gear S3. The rotating dial makes it very easy to navigate the interface. This new Samsung patent details a secondary display that would be placed around the rotary dial area. The design illustrated in the patent shows that the rotation of this display will be limited to 90 degrees.
The patent details that this rotary dial display will provide “simple information, such as a current date, a current weather, a current playing song, etc.” This will be a completely different function than what the rotary dial serves right now which is to enable users to easily navigate the entire user interface.
It remains to be seen when Samsung transforms this patent into reality, just because something is patented doesn't mean it's going to be brought to the market, but this seems like a natural evolution for the rotary dial on Samsung's Gear smartwatches.
