Foldable phones might be the strangest and most revolutionary tech of 2019. But how do these things work, and when will we get the chance to buy them?
What Makes These Phones Foldable?
Sure, we had flip phones that were folding back in the ’90s and 2000s. But we’re in the age of smartphones now, and if you tried to fold your smartphone in half, you’d end up with a broken phone. That is unless your smartphone has a flexible OLED display, a polymer screen, specialized components, and a jointed case. Foldable phones are filled with a ton of revolutionary tech, but the most ground-breaking component that you’ll see is the famous, flexible OLED display.
Organic light emitting diode displays (aka OLED displays) work by pulsing electricity through a mesh of organic compounds. They are extremely thin, flexible, and vivid. They don’t require a backlight, and they can produce bolder colors than thick LED displays.
These beautiful, flexible displays are primarily manufactured by Samsung, and they’re already in a host of products with which you may be familiar. The Galaxy S7 Edge has a curved OLED display. The iPhone X contains a Samsung OLED display. Sony has put out some OLED TV’s, and LG produces a line of Signature OLED TV’s that are paper-thin and slightly flexible.
Manufacturers like Samsung and Royole have been developing OLED displays since about 2011, and these displays have already found their way into a lot of consumer-grade products. Why has it taken so long for foldable phones to become a thing? Well, businesses have had to figure out how to make all of the other components in a phone flexible, too.
Glass isn’t very flexible, in case you were wondering. As a result, manufacturers have had to develop bendy polymer screens for flexible phones. Powered circuitry and lithium-ion batteries can catch on fire if you flex them back and forth, so manufacturers have had to find a solution for that. Aluminum and plastic phone cases are technically bendable, but they’ll snap after a couple of folds. See where this is going? Everything that you’d expect to find in a cellphone has to be revolutionized for use in a foldable phone.
Manufacturers like Samsung and Royole have figured out how to make the components in a phone more flexible. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be releasing foldable phones. But the technology is still in its early stages. That being said, it’s going to take a few years for these devices to become affordable and commonplace.
In the meantime, we can only hope that manufacturers come up with a better name for foldable phones. People will inevitably start calling them “phondables” or “flexiphones,” and that’s just no good.
Foldable Phones Offer Endless Possibilities
So, what are we going to do with foldable phones? It’s kind of hard to figure out where this trend is going because manufacturers have already taken the tech down a variety of unique paths.
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Source : How Do Foldable Phones Work, And When Will I Get One?
