Huawei’s $2,600 foldable smartphone delayed—again
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
The alternative statement, "we expect to be delayed again after this delay", would seem to be fairly nonsensical.
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The needlessly complicated feature no one asked for is proving troublesome to produce. Huh
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Next firmware update you can crumple the whole device, then lay it flat and fold it into an airplane.
What a selling point!!!
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we even have a usb C adapator to a propeller and flap modifier so you can fly it around like a drone.
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I think it's interesting that both designs attempted to merge a large phone with a tablet, rather than a small phone with a big phone.
The latter interests me, the former does not. Perhaps the technology doesn't scale well at this point, or perhaps I'm not the target market.
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Check your phone, lets say, only 10 times a day. You are folding it and unfolding 3650 times in a year. What plastic suitable for making a display can be folded 180 degrees and unfolded thousands of times without it cracking in half?
Exactly.
Exactly.
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Yup, the material science isn't there yet. Nobody is going to make a great product with current display plastics, not Samsung nor Huawei using industrial espionage against them.
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davijoh723
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
I've wanted something like this for a while now. Although I always imagined it in a more polished, sturdier form factor, but this is a start. But technically you can't say "no one" asked for it ;-)
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I guess we will just have to wait for Corning to develop glass that is suitable for such displays.
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I don't know about the display part but I came across a plastic substrate carrying flat conductors that could withstand over 20 million 180 degree flexes. In the 1980s on a classified project.
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I'll wait for the firmware update where you can fold it into an origami swan...
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I am going to play the devil's advocate here but I hope they succeed. Their track record with laptop has been great so far, and for the sake of competition, I do hope they come out with something - and hopefully customer will win.
Fingers crossed for an ultra-thin, foldable smartphone-laptop hybrids in 2050.
Fingers crossed for an ultra-thin, foldable smartphone-laptop hybrids in 2050.
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You'd rather have two devices, one you can carry and one you cannot, instead of one device that can do both jobs and you can carry it? Interesting.
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I for one would love something like this once it's stable and much much cheaper. I hate carrying around gadgets so if my phone could double as a movie watching device, light work device and bookreader it would be sweet.
Now I use a phone and a laptop, no tablet for me because it's more junk to carry.
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I'm interested in the former. The Holy Grail for me would be if they're able to iterate on this to add more folds (or perhaps unrolling) so you can take something like a 6.4" 21:9 phone screen, extend it to a 12" 16:9 tablet, attach a keyboard, and then have a laptop.
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Speak for yourself. A smartphone that can fold up to a small tablet is something I very much would like. Bonus points for the fact it won't be thin enough to shave with.
People who think that, "I didn't want this. Thus no-one did, because everybody is secretly like me" are kinda sorta annoying.
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This isn't innovation, more like colour by numbers ...
The thought behind foldable phones seems to be something like: phones are our cash cow, foldable displays are the latest hot technology, let's put the two together. Pray hope Kellogg's never follows the same process: breakfast cereals are our cash cow, CRISPR is the latest hot technology ... I know, new Super Flakes, now even CRISPR ...
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hones need to be small, simple, robust, and work with a touch interface. Folding displays add size, complexity and by definition they flex, which isn't ideal for touch interaction. They're simply a poor combination.
For price of these "halo" folding phones, you could conceivably buy a flagship conventional phone plus an adjunct rollout scroll display. This display could be larger than a folding phone, no problem with creasing as it rolls, not folds, and if the touch interface remains on the phone then the display flexing wouldn't be an issue. Previous attempts to position phones as a laptop replacement haven't set the market alight, but a decent phone and a large rollout display might just have a chance ...
The thought behind foldable phones seems to be something like: phones are our cash cow, foldable displays are the latest hot technology, let's put the two together. Pray hope Kellogg's never follows the same process: breakfast cereals are our cash cow, CRISPR is the latest hot technology ... I know, new Super Flakes, now even CRISPR ...
EDIT
hones need to be small, simple, robust, and work with a touch interface. Folding displays add size, complexity and by definition they flex, which isn't ideal for touch interaction. They're simply a poor combination.For price of these "halo" folding phones, you could conceivably buy a flagship conventional phone plus an adjunct rollout scroll display. This display could be larger than a folding phone, no problem with creasing as it rolls, not folds, and if the touch interface remains on the phone then the display flexing wouldn't be an issue. Previous attempts to position phones as a laptop replacement haven't set the market alight, but a decent phone and a large rollout display might just have a chance ...
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You don't have to unfold it each time you check it. It's also not folded at the screen level, as there is a radius there. That considerably cuts down on the stress.
And, regardless, we all recognize this is first-get tech. There's a reason most people don't bother with bleeding-edge tech.
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Since Huawei is still in an imbroglio with the US government, it's possible they want to guarantee that the Harmony OS runs well on the device before releasing it, just in case.
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Velkum to the hoodraulic pres channel.... Todai we have a fone for oor pres
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I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I check my phones more than 10 times a day, but most are replying messages. I wouldn't use the tablet form for that, or if I did, I'd probably leave it open in my desk while working, and fold it back when leaving my desk
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It's always fascinating to watch the panicked responses from OEMs when a market segment hits maturity. You just get this explosion of stupid ideas and technically doomed gimcracks right before they realize that the technology and form factor is mature and it's incremental improvements from here on out.
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And for the price of that, I can score an iPad Pro (or insert your preferred tablet here).
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No rumor. They are working on it. Might be ready within a couple years.
https://www.cnet.com/videos/the-bendabl ... le-phones/
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If so it probably won't work anything like their current glasses. Glass almost always fails under flexing because of propagation of microscopic cracks. Gorilla Glass and Willow glass try to minimize this by building in compressive stresses into the glass surface so that even with a little flexing the cracks are still under compression so they don't propagate. I don't see how they could ever build in so much compression that even under a small radius turn the surface would still be under compression.
If you look at their Willow glass applications, you'll notice they talk about shipping the glass flexed and then unrolling it into a final fixed position. That's because they can ship the glass in pristine condition before it gets microscopic scratches. Glass that can bend even more, many times, after real world use, would be radically harder.
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Or using something like an ASUS padfone where you can use the phone alone or docked with a screen to provide a tablet.
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At $2600 this would be the most expensive current ‘mobile’ device, ever. It’s futuristic if you think the future will have lots of gadgets you can’t afford,
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This combined with a headphone jack and an S-Pen would be an almost ideal bit of kit, if and only if they can really crack the durability issues. It's certainly a cut above the Samsung design, however at that price I shall definitely not be the early adopter.
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