Malcolm Owen
A small company has managed to beat major display and mobile device producers like Apple, Samsung, and LG to bringing a smartphone with a foldable screen to market, with Royole's FlexPai being made available to preorder in China on Thursday.
Revealed on Wednesday in Beijing, the FlexPai is a tablet with a 7.8-inch display. The main feature is that the screen can be folded in half, but unlike some Android devices that used two screens for the effect, the display is a single panel that bends enough for the phone to halve in footprint.
While conventional thinking would have the folding screen on the inside of the phone, similar in concept to a flip phone, the California-based Royole opted to put the screen on the outside of the fold, solving the problem of causing too much stress or creating a crease on the screen.
When flat, it offers a full screen to use, at a resolution of 1920 by 1440 and a pixel density of 308ppi. When folded, the screen divides up into three sections, with the 390 by 1440-resolution spine area able to display messages and notifications, while the front and rear are used more conventionally.
The Royole FlexPai folded and taking a callThe folding system allows for the novelty of having a large screen available to view when taking photographs using the 20-megapixel telephoto and 16-megapixel wide-angle camera. Since the cameras are on one side, users can fold the phone and see the preview on both the front and back sides, which also allows the subject to know what the image will look like.
Running on the Android 9.0 fork Water OS 1.0, the Flexpai is powered by an octa-core Snapdragon processor clocked at 2.8GHz, with Adreno 640 graphics and 8 gigabytes of RAM. While it includes 256 gigabytes of storage, it also offers memory card expansion by up to an extra 256 gigabytes, and is powered by a 3,800mAh battery.
Royole initially offered the FlexPai in China on Thursday, priced at between 8,999 to 12,999 yuan ($1,295 to $1,870) depending on the package, with the first phones expected to ship to customers in December.
Royole's sale effectively makes it the first to sell a folding smartphone to consumers, beating out the likes of Samsung and Apple. Samsung was reportedly preparing to unveil its own foldable smartphone, allegedly codenamed "Project Valley," at the company's developer conference later in November.
Apple has also been linked to the development of a foldable smartphone, including rumors it is working with LG on the concept. Analysts have suggested the first iPhone with a foldable display could launch as soon as 2020.
The iPhone maker also as a number of patents and applications under its belt relating to flexible displays and related technology, including hinged devices and wrap-around displays. It has also worked on ideas such as stretchy substrates for attaching components together in a flexible device, and how to enable force gesture controls on similar hardware.
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44 Comments
If ever there was a device that didn't deserve to be invented, this looks like the poster child!
Never heard about this company. Beating the big players to the market doesn't mean a thing. The company just want recognition as being the first IMO.
There isn't all that big a desire of flexible screens, but considering phone screens are still growing in size, a 10" screen iPhone being folded in half for normal use is a possibility, but I think we're 10 years away or more before that comes true, I think no Bezels is the key desire right now.
As far as being beaten to market goes, I think the under screen fingerprint sensor is that key item, a couple of Smartphone this year have had it, most notably the ONEPlus 6T, I assume flagship Androids will have them by 2019, but it is still unclear that if Apple will ever release an IOS device with Touch ID ever again.
Also the under screen selfie Cameras and associated sensors are inevitably going to be a thing, well see how well Face ID can shrink the more or less infamous "Notch".
I point these things out because I'm still a little bit annoyed they removed Touch ID for Face ID when it appears to take up the same screen real estate as Touch ID would, and it is totally un-Apple like to remove features when the alternative isn't clearly better.
Apple out-innovated YET AGAIN!11 Tim Cook, what are you doing??! How will you compete with this??!! I've been an Apple veteran Since the Apple ][, have owned every single Apple product ever made, and clearly this is yet more evidence of Apple losing it's way and continuing on it's downward spiral.