Samsung unveils its foldable phone while it's trying to regain the advantage over Apple | Technology

Samsung unveiled its highly anticipated foldable phone and invited Android developers to start writing apps for the new device.

The South Korean tech company needs to perfect the foldable phone to reverse the sharp drop in profits of its mobile division and restore some of the cachet its brand has lost against Apple.

Foldable phones promise the screen of a small tablet in a handheld device.

At the unveiling in San Francisco, Justin Denison, senior vice president of mobile marketing, presented a prototype with a screen measuring 18.5 cm diagonally.

Folded in half, it looked like a big phone, but Samsung did not give the media or developers the opportunity to touch or see the device closely.

Dave Burke, vice president of engineering for Google's Android software platform, said at a conference in California that Samsung plans to launch a new Android-based device early next year.

"We expect to see collapsible products from several Android manufacturers," he said.

Glen Murphy, the manager of Google UX for Android, was also on stage with Samsung and said Google would work with the developer community to bring more features to the phone.

Samsung said it would be ready for mbad production in the coming months.

Joshua Clark, a developer who was at the conference, said Samsung needed to sell the technology to its competitors for the product to be widely adopted.

"I really think it only takes two companies, and all of a sudden, that will understand," Clark said. "And the fact that Google is on stage, it says a lot. For developers to integrate it into all their applications, it gives me a lot of confidence. "

Bob ODonnell, an badyst at Technalysis Research, said that if the foldable display offered a shock factor, buyers might not like the thickness of the folded phone nor its price.

"They will have to prove it's more than a gadget," O'Donnell said. "But it's a good idea to allow developers to do different types of experiments early on."

Samsung is among a handful of developers working on foldable phones. Huawei has announced plans to launch a 5G smartphone with a foldable screen in mid-2019.

Samsung and Huawei were however beaten on the market by Royole, a Chinese start-up specializing in the display, which unveiled last week a foldable Android phone with a larger screen, priced at 1 About $ 300. Royole said he would start filling orders by the end of December.