Developers from Royole showed a folding flexible smartphone



    About folding smartphones and tablets that can be bent and folded, they say not the first year. In fact, such devices can be quite convenient, plus flexible displays are less susceptible to external factors (shock, bending, etc.). But few companies reach the practical implementation of the idea of ​​such devices.

    One of the organizations that still decided to develop their own device of the original design - Royole. At CES, she showed a flexible FlexPai smartphone tablet with a screen diagonal of 7.8 inches.

    Journalists of some publications were lucky enough to hold this gadget in their hands, having experienced its capabilities. As it turned out, so far the device is not very practical - perhaps because now Samsung is developing its own device with a folding display, so Royole has to act very quickly to become the first. There is no time left for "polishing".

    One of the journalists called the device "amazing folding horror." The problem is that FlexPai, according to this journalist , is poorly functional - the software is not yet adapted to the new form factor, hence the majority of the problems that arise.


    In fairness, it must be said that representatives of other media were not so categorical - most liked the gadget.

    Externally, the device looks quite good. In its normal state, it resembles an ordinary tablet, no different from hundreds of similar devices. When folded, the device looks somewhat strange - the bend cannot be called small, and when bending, the screen is not divided programmatically into two halves, as one would expect.

    More precisely, it is divided, but this process is rather strange. The company tried to make the tablet transfer all application icons and other tools to the half with which the user works. In practice, this does not always work.

    The screen has a resolution of 1920 x 1440 with a pixel density of 308 ppi, which is enough to make the image look good. Unfortunately, in places of bending the screen changes color shades, and this is clearly seen. Sometimes pale areas appear, although in general this is not very critical.



    In order to bend the device, you need to make quite a significant effort. Nevertheless, the case copes with its task and does not fly apart into small pieces, as some testers were afraid of. The device well withstands the influence of external factors (although it has not yet been dropped).

    Worst of all, when folding application icons, they sometimes bump against each other and do not always return to their places when the display is completely folded or unfolded.

    As for the hardware, inside the gadget is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor with eight Kryo 485 cores operating at a frequency of 1.80 GHz to 2.84 GHz, a graphics accelerator Adreno 640 and a 4G Snapdragon X24 LTE modem. RAM - 6 or 8 GB, SSD - 128 or 256 GB. There is also a slot for microSD memory cards. Cameras with 16 and 20 million pixels, a GPS module, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a barometer, light and proximity sensors, a USB Type-C port are installed. The battery received a capacity of 3800 mAh. The dimensions of the device are 134.0 × 190.3 × 7.6 mm, weight - 320 grams.

    The operating system here is Android 9.0 Pie. True, the OS is refined to ensure that the user needs to perform tasks on the device with such an unusual form factor. The head of the company said that the software of the device will be further developed. It is necessary, for example, to improve the work of the cameras, they are now functional, but this and all the good things about their work.

    FlexPai, by the way, is not a working concept. He has already gone on sale in China. True, the price is rather big - you will have to pay $ 1320 for a folding tablet. You can purchase both a regular user and a developer.

    As far as one can understand, companies don’t have a goal to earn - the main thing for it now is to occupy a niche of devices with flexible screens, and do it first. This task is partially completed - a small startup has outstripped Samsung and loudly enough declared itself, so half the work has been done. Now it remains to modify the device and make it available - there are hardly many who want to buy, in fact, a beta version for $ 1,320.

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