From the hand of the almost unknown Chinese company Royole, comes the world’s first flexible and foldable smartphone, the FlexPai. Its presentation was made during the prelude to CES, the world’s premier technology trade show, which took place in Las Vegas, United States, during the first days of January this year.
The mobile device surprised more than one, precisely because it came from Royole, a company that won the race against cell phone giants such as Samsung, Huawei, LG and Apple, in this type of device focused on flexibility.
For those who wish to purchase this device, it is already available on the company’s website for a price of just over 1,300 dollars.
The device
The FlexPai’s display is AMOLED: it is fully flexible and can be folded in half. According to Royole’s website, this device is a combination between a tablet and a smartphone.
What it promises is that it can be used both folded and unfolded without any hiccups. When unfolded, its screen reaches a resolution of 1920 x 1440 pixels and 7.8 inches, while when folded in half, it results in two screens of about four inches.
In expanded or fully deployed mode, the Royole Flex Pai measures 190.3 mm x 134 x 7.6 mm. An interesting detail is that when the smartphone is folded, one of the displays is turned off by default. This is intended to save energy.
Functionalities
The device runs Android 9 Pie, although this is under its own customization layer, Water OS.
In terms of photography, the FlexPai has a dual camera with a 16-megapixel wide-angle sensor and a 20-megapixel telephoto lens.
It has a fingerprint scanner. It also has a dual SIM tray, which means that two SIM cards can be used.
An important detail for the future: its creators say it will be compatible with 5G connectivity when it is operational.
Shelf life
The Chinese company has said that the device can withstand the amount of up to 200 thousand folds. This speaks precisely to what the lifespan of the FlexPai is supposed to be: it means that it can be folded and unfolded about 100 times a day for five years.
The weight of the smartphone is 320 grams. This makes it somewhat heavier than the average device with similar functionality, which is around 200 grams. And it’s not easy to slip it into a pants pocket either.
However, if we take into consideration that this device is the first in its range to be able to fold completely, certain details can be forgiven. The truth is that the race has already begun and it will not be surprising if the technology giants overtake this device in a short period of time.
In fact, already from Samsung announced that the first foldable phone of that company will see the light before the end of the first half of 2019. And Huawei and LG don’t plan to be left behind.
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