It seems that Samsung has looked at Apple’s incredible bending iPhone 6 and thought “I will have some of that.” The outfit is going to ramp up high-end devices with curved screens packed with advanced technology that's tough for rivals to replicate.

This includes rigid-curve Galaxy Note Edge which stands out from a crowd of flat, big-screen handsets. It has to do something. Samsung Electronics is headed for its worst annual profit in three years, and is getting a kicking from Chinese firms like Xiaomi and Lenovo who can do the same thing much cheaper.

Kim Nam-su, a senior Samsung Electronics designer and an architect of the Note Edge said that a collective industry move toward larger screens makes distinctive designs tougher to achieve. He hopes that a curved screen is a big solution for overcoming those challenges.

The Note Edge is not the first device to use a non-flat format. But the curved edge on the device is designed to be more than just a gimmick, offering shortcuts to apps, as well as customization to display message notifications or stream headlines independent of the main screen. This approach is not cheap. In Korea it will set you back $1,000. It has been well reviewed in the technology press which makes a change.

Samsung Electronics declined to give early sales figures or expected profit margins for the Note Edge, but the specialist screen technology required means the curved display is difficult to make and likely more expensive - something the firm needs to address. The Note Edge retails in South Korea for about $100 more than the company's flat-screen counterpart, the Note 4.