Samsung showed off its first prototype for a foldable display in 2011. While its first commercial folding phone wouldn't launch until 8 years later, that initial prototype was enough for people to start dreaming of the foldable phone era. Now that it's here, two form factors are dominating the market — a clamshell design, like the Galaxy Z Flip3, and a book design, Z Fold3-style. But what if there were more? Samsung showed off a couple of new foldable prototypes at CES 2022 in the form of its Flex S and Flex G panels — and they're looking reeealllyyy nice.

Both the "S" and the "G" in the names already give a hint at how these displays work. The Flex S (via SamMobile) is a tri-folding product that you can fold in and out in an "S" shape, allowing you to turn a smartphone-sized device into what is essentially a tablet. The Flex G, on the other hand, is a little bit more compact — it's also tri-folding, but it folds inward in a "G" shape instead of outward, giving you both durability and portability advantages. Either of them work for both compact and tablet-sized devices, and they both look slick as heck.

TCL also showed a number of interesting foldable concepts a couple of years ago, and so have a lot of OEMs since. Samsung is, however, leading the charge right now when it comes to foldable phones, and it also provides other manufacturers with folding screens, so it's good to see the company thinking outside the box when it comes to new form factors. We're not sure when a "multi-foldable" offering from Samsung will arrive on the market, if at all — but other OEMs are also constantly coming up with new foldable form factors, so if you can't wait for Samsung's version, you'll likely see some crazy stuff soon enough anyway.