Gadgetory

yeah can you hold on one second I just got a I got to unfold my phone real quick weird flex but okay I feel like every week we get a new rumor that the Samsung Galaxy fold is about to relaunch like it's coming soon it's passed the tests they finished the redesign it's about to launch again it's finally ready like at this point I'll believe it when I see it but until then since the fold never is officially launched and Huawei's going through some things this is the first and only folding phone to actually ship in 2019 this is it this is the Royal flex pie so I've taken a closer look at it technically we saw it briefly at CES in January but that was barely hands-on like they let us see it and take videos of it but every five seconds they take it out of our hands and show us how to use it correctly so I feel like that barely qualified as a hands-on which like I get it that's your first way of showing the world what you've done but now that I've got it in a studio with no employees around me I get to treat it like I treat every other phone that comes through here normally so the unboxing is pretty solid kind of janky with the amount of poor translation happening in the box but that's not what I'm judging it came with a few accessories in there which is nice but I'm judging the phone here and my first impression just of actually holding the phone for the first time is it's it's really weird looking but I'll get more into that in a sec really the main thing to consider here is there's a couple different ways to do a folding phone there's the way that folds out with the screen on the inside and then there's the way to fold out with the screen on the outside and the bottom line from what I'm getting with the Flex PI is the folding screen on the outside is not the way to go so first of all like we knew already the flexible OLED panel which is the most delicate part is exposed to the elements all the time it's not covered it's also thicker because the components can't really completely fold flat onto each other and unlike folding a piece of paper the radius of this fold is still way greater than 0 it's much more of like a sharp curve than a fold honestly and so the whole thing becomes too chunky to reasonably fit in most people's pockets it's like kind of like the size of the Seinfeld wallet honestly your money now you know what maybe I can't judge the whole concept on this super early hard like so many pieces of this feel just like a hack like look at this hinge the most vulnerable important part that isn't the screen the hinge it's literally covered in this like accordion shaped rubber and then screwed in on the sides it isn't smooth to fold and unfold it kind of makes some noises sometimes when you touch it the wrong way while folding and I just have my doubts about this material not wearing down over time with lots of folds and being in the Sun and getting scratched and maybe even ripping I mean I guess technically the rubber on the back here is preventing debris from getting into the hinge and then maybe popping up under the screens so that's their solution around that but now your phone looks like an accordion also I don't think there's any number of folds that this mechanism is rated for like the Galaxy fold which had that highly engineered hinge we all saw the video where they claimed two hundred thousand folds by a robot and you know we saw how that went but this is not giving me the impression that it's more durable than that really feels like a hack oh and then there's the crease so there were plenty of thoughts on the galaxy folds very slight crease from folding in the royal flex pie because of the way it folds out has two creases you can kind of see them like one on either side of this hinge they try to play like you have three screens one front one back and one side like they really told me that at CES that this is a three screen phone and it's got this kind of awkward sliding shortcut UI in the middle on this third screen that's not what I would call a third screen but you know with any folding phone they're trying to make features that take advantage of this new form factor they've ended up with and with this water OS on the Royal flex PI you know there's a couple there's not many for example you can turn on or off the back screen at any time if you want with a button that's permanently in the navigation bar the front and back screen are also treated like two different user interfaces by remembering the state of your use separately so if I'm on one screen and I open the Settings app and I flip it over and on that screen I open up the clock when I flip back to the other side the settings still open and when I go back to the other side the clock is still open as well so I could see that separate use being somewhat useful if I get used to it kind of like how the Galaxy fold treated the front and back screen as separate most of the time different wallpaper a different app layout the whole thing and then because of the dual camera layout you can have the front and back of the phone show as a viewfinder while you're taking a photo so the selfies shot with the main camera can be you know a higher quality and then people you're taking a photo of will see themselves in the back screen and probably look at that instead of the camera lens and if you scroll far enough in the camera settings there's something called baby mode which replaces that back screen with some entertaining cartoons and characters to get your baby to I guess look at the phone when you take pictures of them nice so that's cool I guess but what this layout has really taught me is if you want to take photos of something out there with the full viewfinder you can't there's no cameras on the back they're all facing you so you can't take photos of things that aren't you unless you close the phone I think my favorite quirk though is that almost every version of auto-rotate almost every version works ready so this works this doesn't work this works and this works and then you fold it you get this to work this works this doesn't work then this does same thing on the other side I don't know why it was so fascinating to me that you have like 16 ways to rotate it and like 14 of them work look this is a super early folding phone and this is what you're gonna get when you've rushed to be first mission technically accomplished you're first but at what cost has it gotten better since CES actually yes especially in the animations Department I still wouldn't call it fluid by any means that's not a word I would use but it's at least smoother than it was a few months ago but no matter how you move around this form-factor grabbing the screen from both sides and folding it in half at least on this phone is incredibly awkward also things like the volume buttons being split above and below the fingerprint reader which is also not our button that doesn't help the lack of headphone jack doesn't help the noises you get sometimes when you fold it that doesn't help and of course water OS not having much English in it no Google Play services no Play Store that didn't help either I'm not trying to put my sim card in this phone and use it every day and have my information sent to who-knows-where I guess importing this phone was a bit of a hack in the first place and all that is not to mention the battery concerns when I first boot it up this phone I got a little bit of a walk through and part of that walk through said only to charge it while it's unfolded I I literally have no idea why bottom line this phone actually just really makes me miss the galaxy fold like I already missed it when I had to give it back but this really doubled those feelings now don't get me wrong the flex PI has flashes of brilliance like sometimes I just look at it in my hands and it's wild that you you have a screen folded over backwards and still working perfectly and responsive and not broken like that's already amazing I feel like you could show this to someone from five years ago and they'd be very impressed and surprised but it also makes you think what will these look like in five more years from today okay I've learned two main things from playing with this phone one being first doesn't really matter if it sucks like and that applies to a lot of other things but especially with new tech and with this folding phone but then to folding in is better than folding out like folding out is cool and it looks potentially better that Huawei mate X that we've been drooling over because it seems to look so much better than the Galaxy fold I think it will look better but I don't think that's the way to use a folding phone I think as long as the screens and the hinges are as shaky and not so durable as they are now folding in is gonna be the better way also don't forget about that Motorola RAZR that's gonna sort of fold in if that ever happens I think that's another good way to do it but the whole folding out thing probably not the way to go either way that's been it thanks for watching got you guys the next one taste