This is the world’s first foldable phone and it isn’t from Samsung or LG

Phones with foldable displays has been touted as the next big thing in technology for a long time now. Every year it seems we have been inching closer and closer to actually seeing this become a reality. We know that Samsung, LG and Huawei are some of the mainstream brands working on foldable phones and that we could see something from at least one of these brands at CES 2019 in January. However, a little known Chinese company called Royole Corporation may have just pipped those giants by unveiling what seems to be the world’s first foldable phone, the FlexPai.

It is kind of debatable on whether FlexPai is a phone or a tablet. If you look at the video below, posted by Ice Universe, you would agree that the device is pretty large in nature for it to be a smartphone. But then again the whole point of a foldable device is so that it can work as both a tablet and a phone. What’s really worth noting here, however, is how the AMOLED display folds in the middle. It does not fold completely flat and you can see a rather big gap area where the fold is. This seems to be a working prototype as the screen gets a little twitchy when the device is flexed as the software switches from full screen to half screen.

This is the “world’s first foldable screen phone” released by Rouyu Technology, which will use the Snapdragon 8150 processor, but its design is very rough, just to seize the “first”, this is a futures product. pic.twitter.com/M0v9o2z0Bw

Ice universe (@UniverseIce) October 31, 2018

The FlexPai brings a 7.8-inch (1920×1440) display which can reduce to 4 inches after folding the display. As this is a rough design, the final product may look pretty different. Another big highlight is that the FlexPai runs on a 7nm octa-core Qualcomm chipset clocked at 2.8GHz, which can only mean the yet-to-be-announced Snapdragon 855/ Snapdragon 8150 flagship processor. This makes the FlexPai the first device to run Qualcomm’s next-gen mobile chipset. It also runs Android 9 Pie with a custom Water OS 1.0 skin on top

As per some reports, the FlexPai comes in three configurations – 6GB + 128GB, 8GB + 256GB and 8GB + 512GB. It also brings a dual camera setup on the back with a 16MP wide-angle lens and a 20MP telephoto lens. The company also claims the device comes with a fast charging technology called Ro Charge that will charge it from zero to 80 per cent in one hour. It houses a 3,800mAh battery capacity and USB Type-C support.

While the model on display seems to have some software kinks, the FlexPai is actually almost ready for commercial use and is said to go on sale in December. Pre-orders for the device will be open on October 31 in China. The FlexPai starts at a mighty expensive price tag of CNY 8,999 (approx Rs 95,000) for the base model and will go up to CNY 12,999 (approx Rs 1,37,000) for the top-end model.