The battle for supremacy is real in the mobile phone markets. LG, Samsung, and even Lenovo have been trying to make gadgets with foldable screens a thing for a while now. But after one tiny rumor said Apple could be working on one too, suddenly everybody is worked up in a frenzy? Please. To be honest Apple’s products are starting to get sort of normal. As a matter of fact, the recent creation by Apple, the iPhone X cannot stack up against the Samsung s9.
Truth be told, here Samsung beat iPhone fair and square. And now the focus is being diverted into the creation of foldable touchscreens. Well, that will be awesome, but the question is who will have the best product. I can already tell Samsung and iPhone will lead the park and am still optimistic that Samsung will develop a better phone than iPhone. iPhone has stated that theirs will be out by 2020.
Ignoring that release date for a second, here’s another newsflash: Of course Apple as a Smartphone company has pretty much already hit the limit on how much they can reduce bezels, with even mid-range phones like the Asus Zenfone 5 offering a 90 percent screen-to-body ratio.
That means companies like Apple and Samsung need to already be thinking about how phone displays can be enhanced next, which is precisely where the idea of foldable screens comes in. On a device with a folding screen, you could have a normal looking phone when you’re walking around town and just need to peek at a text or directions.
But then, when you have some time to kill while sitting on a bus or train, just a few simple movements and BAM, you’ve got a bigger display for streaming Netflix, YouTube, or whatever.
Release Dates
Sounds great right? Sure, but the problem is making it work in a way that will stand up to the rigors of everyday life. Previously, Samsung has said it was planning to release an actual, folding phone this year, in 2018.
That is, until Samsung realized the task might be more difficult than it anticipated, which I should remind you is a sentiment coming from the current undisputed leader in mobile display technology.
Consider other display innovations like curved screens, which first debuted on the 2013 Samsung Galaxy Round and then went through a ton of iterations like we saw on the Galaxy Note Edge and Galaxy S6 Edge in 2014 and 2015. It wasn’t until the S7 Edge in 2016 that the tech was good enough for people to really care about it.
Now, let’s return to that supposed 2020 release date—it suddenly doesn’t seem so far away, does it? Apple has never really been the company to unveil world-first, brand new tech on its phones.
Aside from the 3D laser sensors required for FaceID, Apple usually bides its time, waiting and refining before introducing features like touchscreens, fingerprint sensors, useful water-resistance, or OLED displays. To expect a foldable phone from Apple in 2020 when not a single commercial device has featured one yet isn’t just bold, it’s borderline foolish.
In fact, the most interesting recent tidbit about future Apple display tech isn’t this. It’s the company’s rumored secret display development facility, which is said to be working on new microLED screens—stuff we could see before a foldable iPhone hits the market.
So in summary:
Yes, folding screens are cool and I can’t wait for them to be real. But it’s still way too early to get the hype train started, especially when the news is coming from a financial analyst who presumably only cares how that tech will affect Apple’s stock performance.
