Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Let’s Talk About the Foldable Smartphone!”.
Guys guys it’s happening, we’re finally getting we’re finally getting folding smartphones but like, but why, though, hey what’s up guys umhd here, so folding smartphones are slowly becoming a thing more and more real couple months ago they weren’t a thing. Now they are here’s the timeline. So, for the past couple of months or weeks there had been sort of murmurings of a foldable phone, but nothing actually coming to reality. We’D seen flexible oled displays in the past and things that weren’t really functional devices, but nothing had come to reality. Yet then, a couple of days ago, probably just to beat samsung to the punch to say that they were first, a pretty unknown company called royale corporation unveiled, a smartphone called the flexpi, so the royale flexpi, the world’s first flexible smartphone and uh, without actually trying it And getting hands on myself just judging from this hands-on footage.
This is roughly speaking the ugliest thing i have ever seen. It barely actually folds it’s kind of more of just a bend in the middle and there’s a lot of leftover screen in the middle that doesn’t fold, it looks uncomfortable to hold um and the actual folding and unfolding process is absolutely brutal, though graphics are flickering. You kind of have to feel like you’re, almost breaking the phone, it’s a lot, it’s whatever it’s early, though i get it so made this appearance and the only other info we got were the price and the storage it’s going to be 1. 300. for the 128 gig version to start whenever it comes out by the way we don’t know when it is supposed to come out or if it will actually happen.
But that’s what we’ve been told, but the more familiar story is around the same time. Samsung had been sort of teasing that they’re going to unveil their flexible smartphone. They were the beginnings of leaks, but not really much.
For a day. They changed their profile picture to a a bent, samsung logo, which they changed it back the next day, but it’s just kind of clever marketing and trolling. At the same time, they’re gon na do something, and then it finally happened. So yesterday, on stage at the developer conference, samsung unveiled their version of a flexible smartphone.
It’S called the infinity flex display it folds the other way inward, and it was shown on stage like this after they dim the lights, opening and closing from a tablet size to a phone size already looking better than that flex. Pi nice, okay, pause! So this by itself, this is dope tech. I like this. I think this is cool.
The fact that we can get to this level of advanced smartphones and flexible oleds to the fact that we can make an entire device that folds in half like this. That’S really cool, but why would we want to have that every day? Would i would i want to fold and unfold my smartphone into a tablet every single day, we’re not supposed to think about that. Yet there is a reason. It went dark in there.
This is very unfinished: samsung said the actual phone is coming, hopefully next year in 2019, and even when it does, if it does it’s first generation stuff, so i wouldn’t expect anything too radically polished around the same time. We also did get google announcing. Android is going to support folding displays natively, so that should help smooth some things over, especially in the graphics department.
But what we were looking at on stage was not some finalized completed, folding phone that you can buy sometime soon it was a working prototype of a flexible device that can hopefully be turned into something they can manufacture by sometime next year. Here’S a clearer look from chris welch, a verge reporter, who apparently got video during a rehearsal from samsung, where they left the lights on and right there. You can see the gigantic bezels and the rest of the device pretty clearly including a crease down the middle, where it folds samsung on stage said it’s in this sort of case to hide the final design, but we can be pretty sure they don’t have a final Design, yet now what samsung is aiming for can be found in some diagrams later in samsung’s presentation, and you can see it still has some top and bottom bezels, which will be pretty thick. The overall entire device will also be pretty thick. I guess it’s got to be twice the size of a normal smartphone from top to bottom, but still somewhat interesting, that it’s foldable and we got some specs from samsung too. So they plan for the folded up phone size that they’re aiming for to be a 4.6 inch display 1960×840 and then, when it’s unfolded, the tablet size would be 7.3 inches at 2152 by 1536.. So here’s what i’m hoping uh! This is obviously very generation one and it’s a of a prototype of a device that may or may not be coming in its final version in 2019. I’M hoping this whole foldable thing is the beginning of what could turn into a much more important. Much more interesting, compelling form factor way down the line in the future.
It’S reminiscent of think of the bezel-less movement in phones now right now we’re pretty much all trying to get these bezel-less phones by shrinking down the chin and the top notch as much as possible. Right before that, it was thinning out the side bezels by getting it as close to the left and right edge as possible. We pretty much got as close as we need to now, but a major part of that started in 2014, when phones, all kind of had somewhat thicker side.
Bezels and samsung took a weird step and introduced a crazy product. The project was the samsung galaxy note edge, which had a part of the display on one side curving over the edge with this glass and the bleeding edge. Look it tossed a couple sliding apps on one side gave it a few features and sold it. It seemed kind of weird and kind of maybe useless, but it caught on and then the next year the note had a display bleeding over both sides and soon enough. Every samsung phone had an infinity display with the whole bezel-less thing that just kept going and going so it might not look significant at first and the generation. 1 version might not be that compelling at all.
We don’t know how it feels on the hand or in the pocket or how easy it is to fold or what the apps do on each side. We don’t we don’t know any of that, but if we give it some time to evolve and find out where it’s useful and then iterate on that it could turn out to be great. So i applaud you samsung. I thank you for trying the crazy stuff samsung’s. One of those positions where they can just try crazy stuff with screens that’s kind of their thing, they’re so good at displays now that they can dedicate a team to trying crazy stuff like the infinity edge display or folding oleds and just see if it catches on So maybe just maybe this one will we’ll see anyway back to the reviews. Thanks for watching this one talk to you guys later peace, i guess technically apple had the first folding phone with the iphone 6s plus weird flex, but okay .