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Among the leading smartphone manufacturers, Samsung has clearly defeated all its competitors with its foldable smartphone, but it will certainly not be the only company to offer such a product. TCL, the company behind brands like Alcatel and BlackBerry, is working on its own foldable screen designed for more affordable handsets. Along with the screen, he patented his "DragonHinge" design to treat the crease of a device. The company says that these foldable handsets promise to be considerably more affordable than the first ones on the market.
DragonHinge: Display, hinge, software
In fact, TCL's DragonHinge is a generic name for the project that includes three essential elements: a fully collapsible 0-180 ° foldable AMOLED display built by TCL, a metal hinge for building collapsible smartphones to various and software that allows homeowners to effectively use foldable smartphones (for example, switching from screen covers to main screens, customizing Android apps for large screens, etc.). Building a collapsible AMOLED display with supporting electronic components and firmware / software requires great display technology experience, and being one of the few AMOLED panel makers in the world certainly helps TCL.
An example of use
Flexible, lightweight and durable hinges for smartphones are not as easy to design. In addition, the software part of the equation requires a lot of work and testing. TCL marketing is considering a number of interesting use cases for foldable smartphones, but the practical realization of these features lies with the software team.
To a large extent, these technologies are of strategic importance to TCL as they will enable it to enter the market for high quality consumer smartphones, a place where it is relatively absent today.
At the MWC 2019, TCL introduced several prototypes of its DragonHinge foldable smartphones, stressing that it could exploit its technologies for different types of products: large handsets that can be deployed in tablets to smartphones for those who are not too impressed by the dimensions of the modern flagship brands.
DragonHinge 7.2-Inch: An eye-catcher
The most eye-catching is the TCL smartphone prototype, which deploys in a 7.2-inch tablet. The foldable AMOLED display has a resolution of 2048×1536 and relatively thin glasses that allow the company to offer a 90.73% screen / body ratio. The panel itself can reproduce wide ranges of colors, but the only thing TCL is saying at the moment is that it can display wider color ranges than the NTSC. Clearly, the smartphone has an outside cover and a four-sensor camera, which shows that the prototype is based on the latest technology.
TCL plans to make its 7.2-inch DragonHinge smartphone under one of its own brands available in 2020, which is why it does not talk about the use of SoCs, memory, storage and the modem. The company insists it wants its 7.2-inch folding smartphone to be "a lot" more affordable than Samsung's Galaxy Fold.
One thing to note about the 7.2-inch DragonHinge prototype presented at the MWC is that it is at such an early stage of development that TCL has to demonstrate two devices: one is to show that it has a foldable AMOLED display, and the other to show that it has a proper hinge. The way in which TCL presents the prototypes reveals that it has at least three teams working on collapsible smartphones in parallel and that the teams working on the panel and the software use a chassis other than DragonHinge for design purposes.
Make your phone smaller
Another collapsible smartphone concept that TCL finds interesting is simply a regular phone that can be folded to reduce its size when it is in the bag or in a pocket. The company does not disclose the resolution of the screen for such a phone or the date on which the device will be available. It therefore seems that the concept is very far from its practical realization.
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Source: TCL
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