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Since the launch of the iPhone by Apple in 2007, smartphones have become more powerful, stylish and feature-rich than ever before, but the overall form factor has remained the same. The smartphone market is ripe for change, and foldable phones are gearing up to be the next big thing. However, do not wait until 2019 because a company called Royole beat everyone in the forefront with the Royole FlexPai.
Is this foldable smartphone ready for consumers? And a small unknown company, like Royole, can she really attack Samsung? We had the opportunity to spend time with FlexPai, and the answer is a resounding "no" and no. But that does not mean that Royole did not provide something interesting.
Foldable design
The FlexPai is a unique phone, and this is immediately noticeable when you watch it for the first time. Once deployed, the device offers a 7.8-inch screen, which sits firmly in the territory of "small tablets", with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,440 pixels. Folded, the FlexPai suddenly delivers two screens: one in the 16: 9 format and the other in the 18: 9 format. Royole has presented a few cases of use of a two-screen camera. For example, when you take a picture of someone, you can view the viewfinder on both the front and back screens, allowing the subject to see each other when he is photographed.
You do not need to use the second screen when it is folded. The FlexPai can automatically detect the display you are using and turn off the other one. During our limited time with this, we found that it worked quite well, but there were often nonsense and jumps in the software determining which display it should use.
The screen itself is plastic and not glass, which, according to Royole, can be folded 200,000 times until degradation. This means that if you fold it 100 times a day, the screen should not have a problem for five years before you start to see significant wear. It is very unlikely that you unfold a phone as often. Although we had no problem storing the unit, we saw air bubbles under the hinged portion of the display and the touch sensitivity was odd. We have been told that this is because the phone is a prototype and these issues should not be included in the final version. We are skeptical, but we will have to wait and see to find out.
We saw air bubbles under the articulated part of the display and the touch sensitivity was odd.
The phone folds with a hinge and there is space between the two sides of the phone, which not only makes the device heavier, but also makes it a bit difficult to hold and use. The thickness and usability of phones is a problem that foldable phone manufacturers will have to tackle if it is the future of smartphones, because it is not comfortable to use the FlexPai.
2018 continues the trend of smartphone without glasses, where the contours of the screen are minimized, but it seems that we may have to go back in time with foldable phones because the FlexPai has big glasses. Once folded into a tablet, the telescope is on top; in phone mode, it is on the left side of one of the two screens. In this inch-thick frame, there are two camera sensors, including a 20-megapixel telephoto lens and a 16-megapixel wide-angle lens.
Clumsy software
Perhaps the biggest question mark with the FlexPai is the software. Every time we fold or unfold the phone, the software skipped a bit before settling in the right mode. He uses a forked version of Android that Royole calls Water OS, and the company said it was still working to keep the software running smoothly before it was released. On top of that, it's also hard to know if third-party applications will work on the FlexPai without special development. When asked, we were told that "third-party applications would work as they are on the phone, but specially developed applications would work better." We are not convinced that this phone will be able to run all the usual applications in an optimized way. way.
Under the hood, the phone comes with 6GB or 8GB of RAM and storage options of 128GB, 256GB or 512GB. According to Royole, the proposed chipset is a Qualcomm "Series 8" processor developed with a proprietary process. 7 nm. This means the device is likely to have the next-generation flagship processor, Qualcomm, which has not even been announced yet. It remains to be seen exactly how this chip will be called, but it will probably bring 5G support.
conclusions
The Royole FlexPai is an interesting product, probably one of the first folding phones in the world, but it is not at all a product ready to be consumed. While Samsung has to unveil what will probably be a more sophisticated device in the near future, it's hard to imagine people walking around with a phone of an unknown brand in the United States. There is also a cost. Royole announced that it has made pre-orders in China, priced at 8,999 yuan ($ 1,300) for the 6 GB RAM + 128 GB storage model, 9,998 yuan ($ 1,445) for the 8-bit storage model. GB RAM + 256GB, or 12,999 yuan ($ 1,879) for the storage model of 8GB RAM + 512GB. Even at the time of smartphones of $ 1,000 and up, that's a lot of money to pay for a first generation phone that has not been proven and has not been proven or even really useful.
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