Foldable Future: Smartphones that fold finally make debut

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In the opinion of many tech analysts, smartphone technology has shown little innovation in the past few years beyond getting faster and adding a little screen real estate here and there. But within the past week, a bold new trend has emerged - screens that bend. CGTN's Mark Niu has the details.

At this week's Samsung's Developer Conference, the tech giant showed off what it says is the future of mobile display technology.

"When it's open, it's a tablet, offering a big screen experience."

Samsung says its Infinity Flex Display will go into mass production in the coming months.

While Samsung hailed it as a game-changer, just days earlier, it was beaten to the punch by a startup most had never heard of.

Shenzhen and Silicon Valley-based Royole was the first to unveil a commercially available foldable phone called FlexPai.

"You can actually turn around. You can tell you are using the other side, so this is a 2nd phone. We're using dual SIM cards. So there's basically two smartphones together in this Flexpai and a tablet together."

MARK NIU SAN FRANCISCO "The FlexPai is also billed as being unbreakable. Sturdy enough for me to drop it from here. No damage at all. Bend it and it becomes two smartphones. And I can easily tuck it away in my pocket."

BILL LIU FOUNDER & CEO, ROYOLE "The flexible display, flexible sensors are very, very difficult to make happen. This is totally bendable, flexible and has to be durable, too. Because if you can only bend like 10 times, it's not a product. You have to like make the device sustainable at least for probably 100,000 times repeated bending."

The screen is made from plastic. And because it has three different screens, it runs its own operating system called Water, which is based on the Android operating system.

CHRISTIAN DE LOOPER MOBILE REPORTER, DIGITAL TRENDS "Yeah, I think it's all about apps, if they can get Google Play on there, all the Android apps to work properly even if they are not specifically developed for the phone."

Royole plans to shell out 30 million dollars in grants to help developers create apps for FlexPai's operating system.

Even with other tech giants like Apple, LG and Huawei all believed to be working on foldable phones, too, Royole says it's not worried about the competition.

Mark NIU "Why don't you just sell your technology to the big tech giants? Is that something you'd consider or do really want to go it your own way?"

BILL LIU FOUNDER & CEO, ROYOLE "In the business world, a lot of things happen because the right timing, right turns, right way. There are so many opportunities ahead. We'll see what will happen. This is just the start."

Samsung gave no details on price, while Flexpai's base model is around 13-hundred dollars with shipments expected to begin by the end of the year. Mark Niu, CGTN, San Francisco.