San Francisco, Jun 19 (IANS): Chinese smartphone maker Motorola has reportedly been granted a patent in the US to make a flexible, foldable organic light-emitting diode (OLED) smartphone that would flex, both inward and outward.

It is designed to have a thermal element in the hinge.

"The technology is very clever. There's a temperature sensor that works even when the phone is off and when it's folded. If the temperature becomes too low the screen starts to deform, so the hinge heats up to automatically correct it," GSMArena reported on Monday.

The document issued by the United States Patent Application Publication on June 14 describes the design as "a method, electronic device and computer programme product for countering a semi-permanent deformation at an area of a foldable display."

The patent was originally filed in September 2016 and earlier in May it got approval from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

Notably, Motorola's parent company Lenovo started working on foldable device prototypes before anyone else.

But Samsung looks likely to bring out a flexible OLED phone in the market first -- by next year, the report said.