The company was making progress on the foldable phone, DJ Koh, CEO of Samsung's mobile division, told Cnet at the Galaxy S9 launch earlier this year.
Samsung displayed the foldable smartphone, known as the "Galaxy X," at CES 2018 in private meetings with potential customers, and it plans to begin production in November, according to The Investor, an English business publication based in South Korea.
Samsung's foldable phone will resemble a book, with the main display inside the covers, said Ken Hyers, director of the emerging device strategies service at Strategy Analytics. The exterior will have a smaller notification display on the front, and a camera, or cameras, on the back.
The main display will have a 7.3-inch screen, he told TechNewsWorld. The foldable smartphone may have a 3,000 mAh battery or larger, because "the larger display will drive higher power consumption, meaning that a bigger battery would be better."
However, the combination of a very large display along with the other components necessary to make a folding smartphone, as well as the need for effective heat dissipation, "means that there's little room left for a +3,000 mAh battery" if the device were standard-sized, Hyers noted.
The foldable form factor "means the overall device will be larger, even when folded, than a standard smartphone. Future versions will undoubtedly have larger batteries," he said.