It is indeed true that technology is changing in the blink of an eye. The day is not far when the standard handset smartphone will be a thing of the past.
In this direction, Samsung announced it will launch phones in February or March next year that will have flexible screens that fold inside the phone, that can be opened up to form one, giant screen.
In November, the FlexPai was launched in Beijing. It is a tablet with a 7.8-inch display when the screen can be folded in half, but unlike some Android devices that used two screens for the effect, the display is a single panel that bends enough for the phone to halve in footprint.
Therefore, it is pretty evident, that the tech is almost here. And now, support is on its way to. Recently, Google announced that its Android operating system will natively be able to support foldable screens on smartphones.
You can think of the device as both a phone and a tablet,” Android VP of Engineering Dave Burke explained. “Broadly, there are two variants — two-screen devices and one-screen devices. When folded, it looks like a phone, fitting in your pocket or purse. The defining feature for this form factor is something we call screen continuity.”
Mobile device buyers “are eager to see something dramatically different,” customer experience platform Sitecore CTO Ryan Donovan said. Foldable screens, he said, “open the door to a complete reimagining” of how information is sent and consumed, “more radical” that the smartwatch.
Changeable screens may also offer radical new form factors for marketers. Litha Ramirez, Director of Experience Strategy and Design Group at digital transformation agency SPR, told me “bendability introduces new shapes” that can incorporate a level of depth, such as convex or concave shapes, or even a cylinder. Foldable screens are “on the way to bendable screens,” she said, an evolution that might even lead to screens molded to a specific shape, like a character’s face.