While Samsung is preparing the announcement of its folding phone, the Chinese company Royole presented officially the world’s first folding smartphone, the Royole FlexPai, at an event held in San Francisco where the business has one of its headquarters. The folks from the Verge tested the device and reported the results on their site.
The Royole FlexPai is a 78-inch hybrid foldable smartphone that can turn into a phone from a tablet and vice-versa. However, according to The Verge, the world’s first folding smartphone is by far behind the modern-day high-end smartphones, but nobody can take away from it the achievement of becoming the first foldable smartphone in the world.
The FlexPai will be available in China at a starting price of 8,999 yuan (around $1,300). Also, a developer version would be released across North America. For about $1,3000 you’ll get a variant of FlexPai with 6 Gb of RAM and 128 Gb of internal storage. You can pay an extra $150 to get the version with 8 Gb of RAM.
Royole FlexPai, The World’s First Folding Smartphone, Tested, And It’s Working
Also, Royole FlexPai operates with a 2.8 GHz, eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and boasts a 3,800-mAh battery. Both variants of the world’s first folding smartphone are now available for pre-orders on the Royole official website. According to the company, the devices will be shipped starting with December.
“The software seemed extremely sluggish, apps continuously opened accidentally, and the orientation kept changing randomly when one of the Royole representatives was demonstrating the folding process. That, to me, indicates that the company’s custom Water OS (a fork of Android 9.0, Royole says) is probably not the most robust operating system just yet,” said Nick Statt from The Verge.
On the other hand, Royole stated that FlexPai, the world’s first folding smartphone, is guaranteed for 200,000 foldings. They, however, did not specify what happens afterward.
