Foldable smartphones. The future of smartphone design?

Over the years smartphones have seen drastic changes in the design. From becoming sleek and slip to reducing the bezels. Manufacturer are trying hard to get 100 % screen to body ratio. As a solution for reducing the bezels notches were introduced which basically was a cut-out on the top of screen just to accommodate the necessary sensors and the selfie camera. There are various implementations such as the v shaped notch (tear drop style notch) ,small cut-out etc. OEM's such as Samsung and Honor have even gone further to punch a hole in the display for the front camera. While other companies are expected to follow the trend of punch-hole camera in 2019 many manufacturers are embracing the idea of making the smartphones foldable where screens can be folded into half or so to reduce the form factor of the device while having a larger display when unfolded. 

Who did it First?

While Samsung, Huawei and other leaders of market are yet to announce a foldable phone, a relatively new player called Royale has already unveiled a foldable smartphone during the CES  in January. 

The Royale FlexPai

The Royale Flex Pai is already available for purchase starting at around Rs 90000 but the device feels more like a 1^st gen product. 

Who will follow the suit?
Samsung

Folding

Unfolding.  gif credit@techcrunch.com

Samsung is also expected to launch their version of foldable smartphone during the MWC 2019 scheduled this month and they are already teasing the same. Samsung has already showcased a prototype of the device at CES 2019 in January to very few people behind the closed doors. Several images and videos of the device has leaked after the event that shows how the phone would likely work (images attached above). It would be interesting to see how Samsung the pioneer in display manufacturing would pull this off.

Huawei

Image credit @letsgodigital

The CEO of Huawei Richard Yu during the unveiling of their new 5G chipset had announced their plan to launch a Foldable smartphone. Recently twitter handle of Huawei has teased about the launch of their Foldable display smartphone at MWC 2019 to be held in Barcelona, Spain. I have already covered about it before (Read here).

Xiaomi
While every other manufacturers are teasing the about such device, Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi has gone a step further and released a video of the device where its co-founder and president Lin Bin is seen using the device. Xiaomi plans to have double foldable hinge where the device folds from two points. When unfolded turns into size of a Tablet. You can see the video below

Moto

Moto is also said to be working on its own version of the Foldable smartphone. Patents reveal that the device’s screen would fold inwards with a hinge in the middle just like a clamshell phone. More like the iconic Moto Razr flip phones.

Vivo

Totally out of nowhere and surprising everyone Vivo recently launched its own sub-brand names iQoo (still figuring how to pronounce it?), and recent leaks on Weibo (a social media platform in china) suggest that the first phone to launch under the brand would be a Foldable smartphone. 

Credit : @weibo

It will be interesting to see how Vivo would implement this keeping in mind how Vivo has been launching smartphone with technological breakthrough with smartphones such as Vivo NEX, Vivo Apex 2019 etc.

While all these are those manufacturers who are going to launch the smartphones sometime this year there are others who are too developing the technology and have no plans to launch it till they perfect the technology. Microsoft, LG, Apple and various other are planning to launch their version of the same most probably in next few years.

Tell me through the comments for which of the above mentioned devices are you most excited for.
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