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This might be a bit ‘far-reaching’, but according to patents acquired by Forbes, the South Korean manufacturer may trace the steps of Sony and Nintendo and introduce a uniquely designed tablet. Featuring a clam shell like design, the tablet will sport a dual 7 inch dual screens, a la Nintendo DS. While Nintendo’s portable gaming console was a hit, Sony’s own similar hardware designed slate, Tablet P, was hit with harsh criticisms. Samsung may have proved successful with their multi sized (10.1, 8.9, 7.7, 7.0 5.0) Galaxy Tab series, but it’s a wonder how consumers will react to this design, even coming from a popular manufacturer.

According to the images filed on April 27th with the U.S. Patent Office, both foldable 7 inch screens are connected together by a thin bezel. Aside from the obvious dual screen, here’s another interesting piece of hardware: A remote controller rests between the two screen, hidden in the bezel, that can be used for presentations. While no other details have been released, Forbes believes the slate to be built with businesses in mind.

On paper, the dual screen sounds really great. Multitasking, a dedicated keyboard screen, I mean, what’s not to like? While in theory this sounds great, if history is to repeat itself, it will go in the ways of the Sony Tablet P and Kyocera Echo smartphone which have failed to get any traction. While some of the applications that shipped with the devices took full advantage of both screen, few developers on the Android Market, er Google Play, made their programs compatible. Most apps, however, rendered the bottom screen blank or just failed to run altogether.

If Samsung is looking to shake things ups with this new design, they would have to get developers on board. There’s less than a handful of apps built for dual screen consumption and to be successful, popular apps like Facebook, Instagram and a slew of casual games should run on the device with ease.

Source: Forbes