Samsung unveils foldable phone aiming to get ahead of Apple

Samsung has unveiled its much-anticipated foldable phone and urged Android developers to start writing apps for the new device.

The South Korean tech company needs to perfect the foldable phone to reverse steep declines in profit for its mobile division and restore some of the cachet its brand has lost to Apple.

Foldable phones promise the screen of a small tablet in a pocket-sized device.

At the unveiling in San francisco, Justin Denison, a senior vice president of mobile product marketing, showed a prototype with a screen he said measured 18.5cm (7.3in) diagonally.

Folded in two it appeared to resemble a thick phone, but Samsung did not give media or developers a chance to touch or see the device up close.

Dave Burke, vice president of engineering for Google’s Android software platform, told a conference in California that it planned to introduce a new Android-based device early next year.

“We expect to see foldable products from several Android manufacturers,” he said.

Google’s head of Android UX, Glen Murphy, was also on stage with Samsung and said Google would work with the developer community to bring more features to the phone.

Samsung said it would be ready for mass production in the coming months.

Joshua Clark, a developer who was at the conference, said Samsung needed to sell the technology to its competitors for the product to be widely adopted.