Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Folding Phone You Can Buy Right Now”.
Well, this is, this is not something I expected to ever see on the desk. This is the first taste of folding phones, that anybody got royal Royale Royale with cheese and royal royal royal flex pie and it started the whole thing. It’S a real thing. Look at that, it even won an award red dot design award winner 2019. As of right now, the world’s first commercially available folding smartphone. It folds like to the outside kind of like a backwards fold, the opposite of what you do with your wallet. This was the first phone to showcase that type of implementation, but, of course, popularized by the footage that came out afterwards of the huawei mate X, where people were like. I don’t know which implementation is gon na, be better welcome to flexible plan, a little signature flex pie, it’s a special event. I mean straight away. It feels like an iPad Mini it sort of feels like they intend for you to use it to a certain extent. In this format, look at that alright, so Scott, this reflective kind of finish on the back.
Don’T even ask me about durability. I was skeptical about durability on these things from day one. This one really looks like two: smart phones wedged together. That’S really what ends up happening here could tell right away.
It’S gon na be different display technology from what you’re used to now. This was a thing you kind of saw from Italy to various degrees in a galaxy fold, but definitely not this much little tiny. Blotchy aspects of the display now this one as mentioned folds this way and then connects with a magnet, but it stays sort of open. It does not close completely.
If you see you see light coming through there, yeah not exactly folded. Let’S see you pulled it out. Oh, it doesn’t click. It just makes a weird. Listen to this. It’S not very confidence inspiring.
You hear that noise. It still has a really 1.0 kind of feeling to it. So just keep that in mind.
Now, there’s a fingerprint scanner over here volume down volume, up fingerprint scanner in the center, your camera unit and the only portion of the entire device which isn’t a display. Is this piece right here, two camera modules and a flash right there? This is a cool unboxing experience. Look at all.
I’Ve got all the little boxes, it’s feeling very luxury at the moment power brick over here we have USB type-c. Thank you very much and they’ve also included a headset braided cables. Let’S check it out.
Oh, it’s telling me how to fold it. Oh they don’t want you to touch. Look at this.
Okay do not squeeze the middle area of the screen while unfolding or Benny. I mean this is again when it comes back comes down to confidence-inspiring behavior. This is this. Is not one of them right? This is not this little insight here is not making you super confident they’re like do not touch this region.
The last thing you want when you’re setting it up is to be fearful of potentially interacting with it wrong and catastrophe striking and, of course, we’re all very aware of that. Because of the situation with the galaxy fold, leave the device unfolded when charging the battery or will not use the device for a while. So you know what that kind of indicates to me is probably a heat thing. Please don’t drop it.
You can tell us at one point: oh, I mean instructions for use. They’Re like please be careful one of the problems with current display tech for flexibility. You get this soft plastic outer shell, it’s not Gorilla Glass or anything like that, because of course it has to be able to bend the way that this does. I acknowledge this with the galaxy pulled right away, just how soft this plastic display is and how nervous I was about the while we made X implementation because I was like I don’t know if you want this soft surface on the outside of your device, when you Pocket it and I’m sure, that’s probably why Samsung was motivated to have it closed inwards and put that extra display on there, because with this one, when it’s folded up the entire display is exposed.
I don’t know that this implementation, as it stands right now without some different surface material, is really practical or feasible. Do not adhere any uncertified protective film on top of the display. No third-party screen protectors and the ambient temperature drops below minus two folding and unfolding the device is not recommended -2 Celsius. So in the winter here we are squarely in that territory.
Minus 2 is nothing minus 2. So don’t use it outdoors, basically in the winter, so they call it water OS edge, screen shortcuts. These will pop up in the hinge location when you have it folded over so there’s some special stuff specifically for this phone, but otherwise it’s like your typical Android skin.
They just change the appearance a little bit when you pull down notifications and whatnot, look pretty normal. Fonts might be a bit different now. This really gives you a sense for just how the display appearance will be in sunlight or direct light. You see a lot of imperfections in the display now when you begin to fold it. Let’S see what happens here.
Oh first up, look at that portrait mode, that’s about the size of an iPad Mini in that setup right there. That’S interesting how you begin to fold! It here – and they want me to hold over here it made a weird noise again when I did that and the animation is not super smooth, but, as you can see, you have access to the back of it in front of it. I think yeah there you go and, of course, these quick access buttons as well.
Interestingly enough, the front display is activated the rear one turned off. It looks flush with the phone now, if I flip it around, it can tell that I did that. That’S kind of cool and then understand I want to be on the back side. Android has been adapting to the idea of flexible display, but it’s still not seamless, especially on a device like this. You know what, if anything, this device already is.
Having me more impressed with what Samsung was able to deliver, this doesn’t feel close to something you would want to put in your pocket at this moment in time. Anyhow, so you open up the camera there we go and it’s triggering some sort of auto HDR. It’S looking quite yellow right now, actually pretty quick shutter, though, and just like that you have a photo which does not look good, that one’s better sharper, at least but still weirdly, yellow, and you can see the auto white balance kind of playing around in there, because, If I look down like this see, it go way more blue and then I get on to him and it goes super yellow. So it’s trying to interpret color temperature of the situation and doing so in a really weird way and it’s fairly wide, and I guess what happens to you – it’s just a zoom slider. That’S definitely digital zoom! At that point, if you hit this button in the bottom corner, it says please switch to the secondary screen so now you’re in selfie mode, and you got to come to this side now. The preview is super quick.
It’S like a 60fps preview, that’s kind of cool selfie performance might be a bit better actually than when not having the flip around. I don’t know if it’s using a different camera module when you trigger the selfie mode again, what are your expectations for a brand like this for a 1.0 product like this? Are you expecting flagship, caliber, camera performance or unit for the fold and Bend? I think you already know the answer to that: you’re ready for the fold and Bend so, and a multimedia consumption to watch videos to watch YouTube really where tablets excel is in this department of content consumption. Now, let’s see what a video feels like on here, I mean our videos. Our typical aspect – ratio, 16 by 9, doesn’t quite fill. This up looks alright, let’s see if we can get some extra volume on here, but it’s crunchy there’s a bit of distortion in the sound when you go up above a certain point. Speakers are not as good as the Samsung product, not as good as a galaxy fold.
Look. This is not the finished product, not the final form of the folding phone. How about that for an advantage? You can just stand it up. This is chunky.
It’S heavy! It’S weird, actually, I kind of like it for that. The fact that it’s so 1.0, it almost feels like you’re holding a piece of history. It almost feels like you’re, holding an eventual artifact. This is the first piece of flexible display history that you can order like you can order this thing as it stands right now, so just from from an artifact status. It has some appeal, at least for me as a tech fan, but I’m not gon na recommend you buy it. It feels kinda wonky and it’s expensive as well. So it will just told me it’s 1,300 bucks, so it’s not a good decision right now to rush out and get some super early technology like this for most buyers if you’re, a tech, collector and you’re. Looking for that early artifact and you just want to be on the fringe to be on the fringe, I’m kind of that guy.
For the time being, maybe I got to slip the sim in what you guys say. I don’t know it’s kind of my job, so I’m gon na all right, fine I’ll put my sim card in it suffer on your behalf. That’S what I do. .