Gadgetory

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 I'm Kim PhD here so folding smartphones are slowly becoming a thing more and more real couple months ago they wore anything now they are here's the timeline so for the past couple of months or weeks there have 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 with a punch to say that they were first a pretty unknown company called Royale corporation unveiled a smartphone called the flex PI so the Royale flex PI the world's first flexible smartphone and 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 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 gonna be $1300 for the hundred twenty eight 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 there 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 gonna 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 dimmed the lights opening and closing from a tablet size to a phone size already looking better than that flex pay 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 smart phones and flexible OLED 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 what 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 its 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 you can buy some time 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 average 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 onstage 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 we got some specs from Samsung too so they plan for the folded up phone size that they're aiming for it to be a four point six inch display 1960 by 840 and then when it's folded the tablet size would be 7.3 inches at 21 52 by 1536 so here's what I'm hoping this is obviously very generation one and it's 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 intend phones now right now we're pretty much all trying to get these bezels phones by shrinking down the chin and the top notch as much as possible right before that it was spinning 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 vessels 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 they 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 estate 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 in 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 but they can dedicate a team to try and crazy stuff like the infinity edge display or folding o LEDs 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 guys later peace technically Apple had the first folding phone with the iPhone 6s plus weird flex but okay