Our first glance at the collapsible Samsung raises more questions than answers

By the time everyone waited Samsung's annual developer conference the executive vice president of mobile marketing, Justin Dennison, reached into the pocket of his inner jacket and pulled out the first phone collapsible from Samsung . Rumor has it that the foldable phone for 2019 is the best way to maintain its position as the world's leading manufacturer of phones.

This collapsible phone for 2019 is supposed to call "Galaxy X" or "Galaxy F" – Samsung has not revealed the name of the device.

Wednesday's revelation of the collapsible phone comes at a time when smartphone sales and blocked innovation created a " recession " that threatens not only the dominance of Samsung, but also that of Apple, leaving room for players such as Huawei to tighten its grip already closed . The foldable phones promise to reinvigorate this secure space, where even this year's headliners, from the Galaxy S9 to the iPhone XS only progressively differ from the best models of 2017. Even though a new design radical would upset the industry down, this also raises questions as to its usefulness and the ease with which it could stumble.

Samsung is not the only one to want a foldable phone. LG and Huawei develop their own prototypes, and one brand, Royole, has already released the all-plastic FlexPai whose screen folds outwards rather than towards Inside as Samsung's Dennison phone showed on stage.

Samsung shyly refuses to share more than the essential. We know that the screen folds inward like a book and that there is also a screen on the outside. So you can use the phone when it is folded in half. The company also explained how to create new manufacturing processes and components. Finally, we know that it uses a new interface running Android, called One UI intended for future Samsung phones, probably the Galaxy S10.

What we do not know is if the cover material is glbad or plastic, how much will it cost you and whether its use will be practical or whimsical. What will prevent it from igniting like the "foldable" ZTE Axon M ?

"Maybe when we start selling the foldable phone, it may be a niche market, but it will certainly expand" DJ Koh , head of Samsung's mobile phone, told CNET during an interview in October. "I am convinced that we need a foldable phone."

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"Need" is a strong word for any new category of devices, but phone makers and experts agree on a key benefit: more screen space . A foldable phone essentially doubles your available area.

The design generates new ways to use the phone. You can unfold it to play games and watch videos on a larger canvas. Or, you can divide the hemispheres of the screen into several panes for better multitasking.

For example, one screen could potentially become a virtual keyboard, while the other would form a composition window. Or, you can play the content on both screens and watch the same video clip of a friend at the other end of the table. And a phone that folds up can stand while you watch movies, without having to use them. As the first attempts of dual-screen phones the Holy Grail of a larger screen area offers many possibilities.

Google agrees: the future of phones is collapsible

Samsung, LG and Huawei can not make a foldable Android phone without the support of Google. Moments before Samsung unpacked the foldable phone, Google announced its own support foldable phones . The goal is to make sure that applications work seamlessly when you switch from the outside screen to a larger screen, and from one pane to more active parts of the screen at a time.

These powerful laptops continue to become the center of people's lives. , phone manufacturers have struggled to increase the size of the screen without making the device itself too big and too heavy to carry in a pocket or purse. The foldable configuration aims to change everything.

But handset manufacturers have a lot of work to do. It is easier to say than to make two screens folding back one on the other. A screen capable of bending and bending is one thing – Samsung and LG made their first screens ["curved"in in 2013 and 2014 respectively, but the phones themselves did not bend.

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Placing the body of the device in a retreat is a major challenge: the batteries and components are rigid and its offset can cause an imbalance of the phone. In addition, flexible displays have been in production for years, but thin glbad may have a tendency to break more easily, especially when it is folded hundreds of thousands of times over the course of a person's life. 39, a device.

The Royole FlexPai solves the problem of screen flexibility by using plastic instead of glbad to cover the OLED screen. Plastic is not a popular material today, especially considering its price (FlexPai developer models start at $ 1,588). Royole placed the battery on the right side and said it balanced the left with the other components. A rubberized hinge controls flexion at the back.

Read : CEO of Samsung Mobile: our foldable phone will be a tablet that you can put in your pocket

Despite the design difficulties, the creation of a flexible phone is a risk for Samsung. take. Samsung is betting that being the first major player to show a foldable phone could help it outpace competitors who are trying to eat a slice of its cake. A foldable phone is also a halo device, an ambitious product such as the Ford GT supercar or Nokia's Vertu luxury phones which gives the brand a certain prestige. Volume sales are not the name of the game here, but they capture the attention.

"Should the industry switch to the foldable system?" No, but it opens a new category of hybrid devices, "said Lam, referring to a category that includes phones and tablets. (Note that the term "phablet" was coined in response to Galaxy Note for the same reason.)

Samsung's challenge is to ensure that its bold new designs do not flip and bombard. The company took a risk with the Galaxy Note series, and that ultimately paid off. Despite a difficult start, Note is now a well established and loyal brand, and the design of the giant screen phone it has launched is now the industry standard. However, the exclusively Korean Galaxy Round the world's first curved-screen phone, was a sales flop, even though it led to the curved-edge Galaxy phones that we take for granted today. # 39; hui.

We still have no details on the hardware specifications of the Galaxy F, but the foldable hybrid would have a 7.3-inch screen, a silver finish and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8150 processor. Its internal memory is 512 GB, with support for a microSD card.

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"The price of this technology will be very high," Lam said. "It will take years before a consumer version is available at the right price."

At this early stage, it's best to set up the Galaxy X / F and any first-wave foldable phone as a stepping stone to a device we may want someday, rather than the one we need now.

Originally published on November 6th.
Update, Nov. 7 : Added additional details after the Samsung event.

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