Gadgetory

let's talk about bolding smartphones you probably heard about this you might even recall a video from 2014 in which Samsung first teased the idea of a folding smartphone all the way back then and it's something people have been talking about ever since and the reason people are interested in the idea of folding smartphones in the first place is because of the technological advancement that has taken place in displays allowing them to be flexible OLED panels that can spin and turn and fold and so on without being busted like a traditional rigid material now if you watch the original video in which Samsung showcased the idea it was shown in a format form factor sort of like a passport or a wallet it folded in half with an image on the outside a screen on the outside that you could interact with and then you could fold it open for a larger image sort of more tablet like it's kind of like having a phone and a tablet at the same time now we have a new development in which the CEO of Samsung has said they're doing it for real and it's happening this year happening in the sense that they're gonna announce it I guess because he said they're targeting the Samsung Developers Conference in November that means come November we may be able to set our eyes on the world's first folding smartphone now granted there was a folding smartphone previously but it was a bit different than what we're talking about here so I made a video a little while ago on the ZTE axon M that's sort of more like two phones sandwiched together with a hinge here it is kind of a cool thing messenger on the top display watch a video on the bottom display or vice versa and in the case of this device it was incredibly low volume it wasn't super popular so many people have transitioned to their smartphone as their main computing device and are lying there in bed you know cranked up got looking at it like this typing and so on and so having the extra real estate there for like extended usage scenarios it could it could be a valuable thing or a thing that people are interested in the biggest player in the smartphone space right now Samsung says they're gonna take it serious not like this but instead a single panel that's capable of folding into itself or away from itself one screen no hinge no break not to be clear in the statement of Samsung CEO he said that the device has to be capable of being used in its folded State as well as its unfolded state so some of the prototypes i've seen floating around in which it shows a clamshell almost flip style device which then folds out to a larger display with no display on the outside I don't think that's how they're gonna go about it at least based on the language that he's currently using here now at this point you're probably wondering like what is the big deal here why is there so much focus or hype around the idea of a folding display of course I gave you the reasoning previously that it could be about multitasking or it could be about having one single device instead of many devices for your computing needs but I don't honestly think that's what's going on here I think that there's a technical a technological capability here from Samsung to be able to do this so they're sort of more in the camp of why not if we can do this right now and compel people to move on from the current smartphone form factor we can sell a lot more devices if we can put something in someone's hand that looks tangibly different from all of the slabs that are out there in in people's pockets it's become harder and harder to compel people to purchase smartphones around that premium price tag that price tag that Samsung has lived in for so long with their Galaxy products now speaking of price the rumor for this potentially folding smartphone is somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 bucks so they want the premium sticker they're gonna have to deliver something significantly different from what's happening at the lower end of the market now the reason for this speculation on my part has to do with sales figures and the fact that many competitors at the lower end of the market have been climbing up the ranks and getting closer to Samsung in terms of market share companies like Huawei and others Oppo and so on the CEO of Samsung also say that they are going to have a greater focus in the upcoming year on more mid-range competitive devices devices with a lower sticker price that can deliver value to compete with all these upstarts including the phone that's in my pocket right now from Xiaomi in the form of the Polka phone f1 now another area of interest for me with this particular story is the idea that Samsung is the perfect company to do this and the reason is and I'm sure many of you are aware they're sort of the top dogs in the OLED display space when it comes to smartphones many other manufacturers that they compete with rely on them for the screens that will then go into their smartphones Apple and others if we all go out and adopt this bendable display smartphone now not only as an end-product company selling smartphones directly to customers also as a vendor to other companies they become more important because these panels are very difficult to make and it's the reason they don't have a ton of competition in the smartphone OLED space and so many manufacturers have to show up purchasing in volume these screens from them already this type of technology if they can bring it to scale and deliver it in an end product means that they don't only corner the market from a customer perspective but they also have the potential to corner the market from a vendor perspective which can have a huge impact on their bottom line just imagine this the bendable wallet like potentially trifold smartphone becomes ubiquitous everybody wants one they want Apple to make one they want Huawei to make one and so on where do those companies end up who has the text that they need it ends up back in Samsung's pocket so maybe this is a bit of a bet with a farther or a longer or a bigger forecast a bigger puzzle in mind where they're like if we can do this we must do this even if the immediate use case scenario is not there even if the volume at the start might not be enough to justify the investment in R&D so they can kind of stake their claim as the leader in that particular technology OLED panel technology are already there right now it would make sense to go ahead and extend that lead as a customer as a guy who uses smartphones all these prototypes that I've seen of this bending phone it does seem a little it doesn't seem fully fleshed out right now you feel like you may end up with a bigger form factor you may end up with something fatter with a huge display like that I mean generally in terms of a tablet you need a huge battery to power it up for any reasonable amount of time I can see all kinds of potential pitfalls with this type of design my intuition at this time is pointing in the direction of some strong compromises in exchange to just have this think both so from an end-user perspective I'm having a hard time believing that people are necessarily clamoring for this but from a vendor perspective if I'm Samsung I'm like I got to put this thing out we got to get to the moon first we got to build some stuff that isn't being built and we have to be the first ones to announce it and that's what they're aiming for in November keep an eye out the question now goes to you will you be compelled to purchase a bending smartphone like the one we're speculating is coming from Samsung will you pay somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars for something like that or do you think the fire in this industry is at the lower end of the marketplace with the devices delivering value under $500 where should Samsung be putting their focus and are you a future owner of a bending smartphone