Podcast: 2nd Gen Foldables Point to a Promising Future for Mainstream Market

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Podcast: 2nd Gen Foldables Point to a Promising Future for Mainstream Market

Sep 24, 2020

The foldable phones have been around for a few years now, especially if you remember the clamshell form factor. Even the Nokia Communicator was a foldable smartphone with a small screen on the outside and a bigger display on the inside. But a lot has changed over the years, as we moved from phones with alphanumeric keypads to full QWERTY keyboards and now a fully evolved touchscreen smartphone. A smartphone with a flexible, foldable display, which was once just a concept, is now a reality. The current foldables come in different form factors, offering different functionalities.

We have seen the Royole FlexPai and Huawei Mate Xs with an outward folding display, and the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Z Fold 2 with an inward folding display. When folded, these are smartphones, and when unfolded, they completely transform into a tablet. Samsung and Motorola also launched clamshell smartphones offering a near edge-to-edge foldable display when opened.

In the latest episode of ‘The Counterpoint Podcast’, host Maurice Klaehne is joined by VP of Research Neil Shah to talk about foldable smartphones. Having used the Galaxy Fold before, and currently using the Galaxy Z Fold 2, Neil shares his thoughts on foldables, and his first impressions of the new Samsung foldable phone. The discussion also touches upon different foldable form factors that we have seen so far, the challenges from design and software perspective, and more.