CES 2019 : Royole FlexPai is the world’s first FOLDING smartphone – beating Samsung and Apple

SMARTPHONES have just been given a makeover – as the world’s first FOLDING phone debuts this week.

The Royole FlexPai is the first truly foldable smartphone, and it’s being showed off at the CES 2019 tech show in Las Vegas.

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The handset was formally announced late last year, but has now been seen in the flesh (or metal and glass) by reporters from all over the world.

It lays to rest any scepticism that the phone actually existed – and The Sun can confirm that it bends and flexes just as promised.

Although it’s technically a “phone”, the device actually has a large tablet-sized display.

It’s only once you fold it inwards that it starts to look more phone-like – although a fair amount thicker than your iPhone.

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The folding mechanism is quite smooth, although the device is hardly pocketable.

Still, it’s an impressive feat from a relatively unknown company.

Most impressive is that Royole – based half in the USA, half in China – beat the world’s biggest tech giants to the finish line on folding phones.

Samsung has been working on foldable handsets for years, but won’t properly debut its folding handset until later in 2019.

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The Royole FlexPai gives us a glimpse of what to expect from bigger firms once they get their act together.

Royole said it wants to “disrupt consumers’ traditional concept of a smartphone”.

“FlexPai can be used either folded or unfolded, giving it the portability of a smartphone plus the screen size of a high-definition tablet,” the company explains.

The screen bends freely from zero to 180 degrees, and is rated for up to 200,000 bends.

That means you could bend it 183 times a day for three years straight before you’re in uncharted territory.

Royole says the FlexPai screen “cannot be cracked or easily scratched”, which will supposedly end “the era of broken smartphone screens” – although we can only take the firm’s word for this for now.

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The tablet runs on Google’s Android operating system, and supports split-screen mode when unfolded as a tablet.

You can also use it to watch videos, play games, and drag and drop content between applications.

And it’s running on the Snapdragon 855, which is Qualcomm’s latest and most powerful smartphone chip.

That said, the tablet-phone didn’t have the smoothest performance, which suggests it’s not particularly well optimised just yet.

The screen measures 7.8 inches (with 1920 x 1440 pixels), and there’s a dual-camera set up that features a 20-megapixel telephoto lens and a 16-megapixel wide-angle lens.

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The tablet is available to buy in China right now (no word on a UK release, sadly), and will set you back the local equivalent of about £1,000 – the same price as an iPhone XS.

We’re expecting more foldable phones next month, to coincide with Barcelona’s annual MWC 2019 tech convention.

Would you be tempted by a folding smartphone? Let us know in the comments!

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