Being able to score cutting-edge technology comes at a price and Samsung's Galaxy Round, the first smartphone to ship with flexible display, is no exception.
Earlier this year LG announced that it was working on the world's first smartphone with a flexible display and said it planned on releasing the handset later this year. Samsung was also working on its own flexible displays for smartphones and beat LG to the punch by announcing the Samsung Galaxy Round a few weeks before LG announced its G Flex smartphone.
Both companies took different approaches with how the design of the flexible displays would grace their smartphones. Samsung's Galaxy Round's flexible display curves side-to-side and conforms to fit your hand better, while LG's G Flex display is curved from top to bottom to better conform to your face. The jury is still out on which display will prove to be more popular and useful.
Samsung has once again beaten LG to the punch, as customers in the U.S. can now purchase Samsung's Galaxy Round unlocked. The smartphone isn't being mass-produced like the company's other Galaxy handsets, due to the difficulty of producing the round displays. If you're the type that has to have the latest tech and bragging rights, get ready to spend around $1,130.00
Negri Electronics has started offering the unlocked Galaxy Round for sale and it's charging $1,129.50 for the device. The curved smartphone is very similar in terms of specs to the Galaxy Note 3 but does not include the S Pen. The Galaxy Round features a 5.7-inch 1080 x 1920 Full HD Super AMOLED curved display and runs Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. It's powered by a 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and 3GB of RAM. It includes 32GB of internal storage and a microSD expansion slot that supports up to 64GB microSD cards.
Its camera capabilities include a 13-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and LED flash and a 2-megapixel front facing camera for video chat. In terms of wireless connectivity you'll find a 4G LTE-Advanced radio, HSPA+ radio, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, NFC, and GPS. Samsung ships the smartphone with a 2,800 mAh battery that it claims will provide up to 16 hours of talk time.
If you can get past the $1,129.50 price tag and still want to be the first one on your block to own a smartphone with a curved display, you'll need to get in line. Negri Electronics is already listing the Galaxy Round as being backordered.
