Hollis Johnson/Business Insider; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
- Four major smartphone makers — Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, and Xiaomi — unveiled their first foldable smartphone prototypes earlier this year.
- Samsung and Huawei, the two biggest smartphone manufacturers in the world, were expected to launch their first foldable phones, the Galaxy Fold and Mate X, in the first half of 2019.
- But after Samsung bungled the debut of the Galaxy Fold, and Huawei delayed its own foldable device, the future of the foldable smartphone is up in the air.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Over a decade ago, the world started shelving their cellphones — with their static screens and limited applications — to embrace smartphones, which offered large touchscreens to watch movies, play music, and even browse the web.
We have loved and lived with these rectangular designs for years. But several months ago, we got a glimpse of something new: potentially the next evolution of the smartphone.
Imagine holding your phone as it is right now, but opening it up like a book, and seeing a new display inside that was double the size of your outside screen. That’s the dream of foldable phones, to be both a phone and tablet in one form factor. Unlike smartphones, which have singular, fixed displays, foldable phones promise more screen real estate when you need it.
When a handful of the biggest smartphone makers in the world announced their first foldable phones in February, it looked like the world was ready to welcome a new form factor once again. But it only took a few months and a bunch of upset tech reviewers to postpone that dream for the foreseeable future.
In late February, a handful of smartphone makers announced their plans to release foldable smartphones in 2019.
Eric Risberg/AP
Samsung surprised everyone expecting to see the new Galaxy S10 phones at its Unpacked 2019 event by debuting its first-ever foldable smartphone at the very beginning of the show.
Samsung
Starting at $1,980, Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, with its two screens and five cameras, would be about twice the price of most premium smartphones — about as expensive as a high-end laptop.
Samsung Unpacked 2019
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- One of the most innovative companies out of China just introduced new tech that can fully charge a smartphone in just over 10 minutes
- Samsung is reportedly bringing back the classic flip-phone design with a new foldable device
- These are Apple’s 3 best inventions since the iPhone
Source: Business Insider – dsmith@businessinsider.com (Dave Smith)