The foldable phone factor
In 2018, a less-known United State-based smartphone marker, Flexpai came up with a noble idea unprecedented at the time.
The company had a working prototype of a tablet-phone combo. This was a tablet size gadget that could be folded outwards into half to make it a double-screen smartphone, small enough for the pocket.
A foldable phone is simply a smartphone that stretches out into a tablet.
A few months later, Samsung rode on the wave of the idea and announced that it would be introducing Samsung Galaxy Fold.
When Galaxy Fold hit the market a year later, it had some issues such as users mistook a plastic screen holder as a factory screen plastic protector and as expected users went ahead to peel it off and hell broke loose.
Samsung moved in quickly and solved the problem with the introduction of Samsung Galaxy Fold2 in 2019.
Huawei made its intentions clear in 2019 that it would join the foldable phone bandwagon. This was, however delayed because Google could no longer license new version of Android to Huawei because of the ban that the Trump government had imposed on Huawei.
Apart from Microsoft that introduced a foldable smartphone running Android in 2020, much has not been heard on this amazing idea.
This could be because of challenges such as its size in that it is too big to carry around and cannot fit comfortably into pockets. However, a tablet has a screen big enough to make movies look real. It also makes typing blissful.
While the idea of a foldable phone sounded attractive, Its price was not. At $1,499 (K1.1 million at today’s rate) most people could not just afford them.
To make an Oled display foldable, the screen protector cannot be flashy glass because there is no foldable glass.
This makes the display of the foldable phone look less attractive as it is covered by plastic. All I am trying to say is that you cannot make the display of a foldable phone look like diamonds as in Samsung Galaxy S-20.
Most premium smartphones like iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S-20 or Galaxy Note are about 6.8 to 6.9 inches diagonal. That is almost the size of a tablet. This negates the need for a tablet, bendable or otherwise.
Bendable gadgets usually develop problems after a few years of use. It is either they just snap open or they develop cable problems. This makes users unsure of the durability of bendable smartphones.
The idea is good but the prices must be right to cushion people from foldable phone fears.
