I think part of the reason was to look good in stores. If you have a non curved and curved phone next to each other playing the demo video, the curved looks waaay more futurostic.
This is what it was when they introduced it. I used to work for an Android OEM at the time and the product people really wanted to get their hands on curved screens for the same reason. Eventually they got Samsung to sell them some but it wasn’t as curved as the ones Samsung used on their devices to keep differentiation. It still cost twice what flat screens which ate a significant chunk of the profit margin.
My personal theory for the curved edges is, that samsung just wanted to prevent cheap off brand replacement screens.
I think part of the reason was to look good in stores. If you have a non curved and curved phone next to each other playing the demo video, the curved looks waaay more futurostic.
Mine is that they wanted it to stand out, compared to all the other phones with flat screens at the time, especially with all the design clones.
You would look at it and go “oh that phone looks funny, must be a Samsung”.
This is what it was when they introduced it. I used to work for an Android OEM at the time and the product people really wanted to get their hands on curved screens for the same reason. Eventually they got Samsung to sell them some but it wasn’t as curved as the ones Samsung used on their devices to keep differentiation. It still cost twice what flat screens which ate a significant chunk of the profit margin.