TCL has revealed the future of foldable phones, but we’re not quite ready for it yet…
Future gazing is the most exciting-yet-most ultimately disappointing time for gadget geeks.
Like petrolheads and their fancy batmobile concept cars, we get a chance to metaphorically salivate (or literally - I’m not here to shame) over the future of a product category, as a company with some extra R&D money left to burn shows us a sneak peek of what they’re working on.
But the main difference between the aforementioned cars and tech is that usually the car fades away from existence. They’re not built to be a new consumer model, simply to show off a couple of cool features. The gadget, however, returns in full consumer form a few years later (just take a look at how long Samsung flirted with flexible displays and tell me I’m wrong).
And the reality of this concept work for Samsung so far? A first gen foldable phone mired in controversy for being incredibly prone to breaking, and a rebirth of the classic flip phone - albeit with a ridiculously expensive price.
I’ll forgive you for the first one, Sammy, because I know the importance and excitement of getting out there first with a consumer foldable handset like this. But come on, your second answer to this futuristic as f*ck gadget wizardry is to take us all the way back to 2002?
Just a bit dull isn’t it - like asking your Mum for a Sega Megadrive but getting a Sega Pico educational console instead (no I’ve not forgotten about that), but I digress!
Why do I bring this up? Well, as the title of this piece clearly states, TCL (usually known for cracking out some belting TVs) have unveiled some rather interesting new foldable phone concepts.
One is a tri-fold concept - take a piece of A4 paper and fold it into equal thirds. That’s what this is (also, that’s totally how we got this totally realistic-looking photo of me holding the phone). Using both of the company’s hinge technologies - Dragon Hinge (the hinge that closes in on itself as you open the phone) and Butterfly Hinge (the ability for the screen and hinge to bend back on itself, rather than fold open like a book), this 6.65-inch device is able to open up into a 10-inch tablet - with 20.8:9 aspect ratio and 3K resolution.
Now, let’s ignore the fact that Android has never made for good tablet software UI and focus on the fact that this is just downright cool.
And they didn’t stop there, as TCL also dropped a world first rollable phone display concept on us too. Again, like above, the video describes things better than I can, but for a text description - the screen is rolled up inside the phone around the back, and when you want more screen real estate, you can just pull the display and extend it. Think like expanding an accordion and you’re on the right tracks.
Thanks to the rollable AMOLED panel, this can be stretched from 6.75 inches to a 7.8-inch device. Plus with the screen being rolled up and not folded, there isn’t a single screen crease to be seen anywhere!
Again, it’s just got that cool factor that gets geeks like me pretty excited. Will it translate well to a consumer product? That’s one of those magical “time will tell” kind of moments - writers will give you their predictions completely separate from the normal human being (they said cryptocurrency would be huge by 2020 and look where that got us). So it becomes entirely dependent on the real-life context they can give each of these devices.
Could the tri-fold concept be sold as a prosumer device with the real ability to create stuff on the go, being the most available device when inspiration hits you? Maybe…
Is the rollable phone the ultimate content consumption device on the go - giving you more screen real estate on the commute? Maybe...
These are all questions that TCL has to think about and come back to the people with, when they are ready, of course.
But here’s where the bad news, we are definitely not ready for something like this yet… Have you seen what we have right now? Currently, the interpretation of foldable phones by the industry is the equivalent of your favourite band playing the classics, but trying to update them for the newer times - like if Slayer decided to add a Korg 808 bassline and trap beat to Raining Blood.
They just want to bring the old flip phone back with this new flexible lick of paint, which to some degree is a good thing. It normalises the tech for the mainstream consumer - gives them a context point to relate it to (“oh, it’s like your old flip phone Mum, but the entire inside is screen”). But as I hinted to above, the reliability is not there for your Mum to use these phones, it’s not affordable, and the idea of going backwards design-wise is just a bit...boring to me.
This, to me, is the actual future of smartphones. We’ve become used to the slab smartphones, and the possibility of folding this existing form factor in half, while probably attractive to a more fashion-forward crowd (or people with small jeans pockets or a clutch bag dominated by a phablet), isn’t the best use.
Instead, it will be how this tech gets used to take the slab forward into the next generation - and a rolling extendable display or a phone that folds out into a tablet is a damn good direction to go (on paper).
