TV maker, TCL has unveiled its first folding smartphone at CES 2020. The foldable device is, however, still a prototype. It is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 660 SoC and runs on Android 9.0 Pie. We, however, expect the company to up these specs once the device is ready for commercial launch.
The phone’s foldable mechanism is clamshell similar to what is expected to be the form-factor of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold 2. The device bends in half and when opened, reveals a 7.2-inch flexible touchscreen.
Now at the ‘functional prototype’ stage, the TCL foldable phone doesn’t even have a selfie camera on the inside. There are also various glitches that the device faces. According to SlashGear, the foldable device has a habit of turning the flashlight on when the screen is closed, and the screen rotation is sluggish.
However, a notable characteristic is that the phone shuts altogether, leaving no intrusive room for the triangular gap between the two halves like what is on Samsung’s first-gen foldable device.
On the optical front, TCL did not detail on the camera hardware, but it will come with a quad-camera setup. This foldable device is not coming any time soon, at least. The company is even still undecided on the final design of its first commercial flexible screen device. They still have dozens of foldable designs at different stages that they can consider.
2020 has been predicted to be the year of foldable phones. Last year we saw several foldable phones slapped on top with premium prices to say the least. This year, that’s going to change.
Foldable Phones in 2020
Major OEMs, Samsung and Huawei have already planned to launch iterations to their 2019 phones.
Samsung is expected to unveil a successor to its first- device – Galaxy Fold – at the Galaxy Unpacked Event scheduled to happen on Feb 11. On the other hand, the Chinese tech giant is also working on an upgraded version of its flexible display phone. Huawei Mate Xs, will be announced at the MWC next month. Apart from this, Huawei is also working on a successor to be unveiled later this year. Several other smartphone makers are also expected to reveal their foldable devices this year.
Featured Image/SlashGear