For the past few years, display manufacturers have been tempting us with curved displays that can bend, but not break. Most would have assumed we’d start seeing them in futuristic smart bracelets, but Samsung has decided its first foray into curved displays will be hopelessly generic.

Samsung announced the Galaxy Round – a smartphone with a slightly curved display – yesterday evening. The Galaxy Round packs the same guts as the Galaxy Note 3 so don’t expect any surprises as far as specs are concerned. It does, however, sport some unique functionality thanks to the curved display. For starters, you can tilt the phone to check for missed calls, the current time, etc. You can also tilt it back and forth while playing music to skip tracks.

Beyond the slight curve and somewhat unique features, the Galaxy Round doesn’t really deliver on the promise of curved displays. Sure, it’s kind of cool, but a lot of us got our hopes up when we saw device manufacturers bending a display backwards. Such functionality doesn’t make much sense in a phone, but surely Samsung could have done something cooler with the world’s first curved display smartphone.

My own complaining aside, the Galaxy Round is only available in Korea for now. There will probably be an international release, but we won’t see it in the states for quite some time. After all, the Galaxy Note 3 just launched stateside earlier this week.

If you want to see the Galaxy Round in action, check out this short video that shows off one of the “amazing” possibilities that a curved display provides:

With Samsung’s curved smartphone being such a disappointment, maybe LG’s curved display that’s expected to launch next month can do better.

[Image: Samsung Tomorrow]