Samsung’s Gear S3 smartwatch has a touchscreen display, but also features a rotary dial that surrounds the display, allowing you to twist the dial to perform some functions, such as scrolling through your apps.

But Samsung is at least considering the possibility of using the rotary dial for something else: a display.

Patently Mobile spotted a patent application from Samsung for the tech that would allow the company to create a smartwatch with a secondary display that wraps around the edges of the watch face.

The idea would be to show information like the date, time, weather forecast, or currently playing song on the secondary display, while the primary smartwatch screen shows your watch face or other apps.

It’s worth keeping in mind that companies like Samsung apply for patents for many concepts that never actually see the light of day. But given the company’s track record of producing flexible displays and of doing interesting things with watch bezels, a watch with this kind of secondary display seems like a completely plausible idea for an upcoming Samsung product.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers