The phone firms bringing new ideas into the fold
The future is bendy, judging by tech giants’ revolutionary designs
IT’S typical, isn’t it? You wait months for a folding smartphone to come out, then two come along at once. This week saw the 2019 version of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) event take place in Barcelona.
This annual shindig sees some of the big guns in the mobile industry show off their latest ideas and products.
Obviously, the biggest of the big guns – namely Apple and Samsung – are too big by far to bother with such trivialities.
Apple steers its own course, of course, while Samsung held its event in San Francisco a few days before MWC to show off its new stuff. And that is where we saw Samsung’s own folding phone.
Imaginatively called the Samsung Galaxy Fold (why does Samsung call everything it makes “Galaxy”, I wonder?), the device is a remarkable piece of kit that features two screens.
When folded it looks very much like a regular smartphone, albeit a lot thicker at 17mm, with a screen and a selfi-cam on the front and a three-lens camera on the back.
But when you open it out, it reveals a 7.3in display inside that can unfold to flat. Samsung’s demo of Google Maps being used on the front screen when closed, then switching quickly to the bigger screen when it was opened was impressive.
There are a further two cameras inside, so you can take photos whichever way the phone is held.
Samsung says it has devised a new kind of super-strong hinge that can withstand thousands of openings and closings, and has also put batteries in each side of the phone for a long runtime.
One of two major surprises about the phone was the fact that it’ll go on sale at the end of April, much earlier than had been thought.
And the other surprise – greeted with groans and some laughter at the event itself – was the price. The Galaxy Fold will start at $1,980 (£1,500) when it hits the shops.
You can find out more and register interest at samsung.com
Back at MWC, Huawei showed off its take on the folding phone – which proved somewhat different to Samsung’s.
The Huawei Mate X has just one screen which is on the outside of the device, wrapping around front and back – you can open it out to be flat creating a single surface which is slightly larger than the Galaxy Fold’s at 8in. Closed, the device sports a 6.8in screen on the front, and a 6.6in screen on the back.
The Mate X also takes a different approach to camera placement
– the Leica-engineered modules are all housed in a strip that, when closed, runs down the edge of the back of the phone – there is no camera on the front of the device, nor can you take selfies when the device is open. Since there’s a screen on the back when it’s closed, though this might not be a problem.
The camera housing, including a fingerprint sensor for unlocking, acts as a grip when open.
One of the most impressive things the Mate X can boast about is its thickness – just 11mm.
The Mate X is set to hit the market sometime in the middle of the year, says Huawei, and it’ll cost €2,600 (that’s almost £2,000). Check out consumer.huawei.com/uk for more on the Mate X.
LG showed off its thinking on this new kind of phone at MWC, with the reveal of the V50 – essentially two phones connected together with no foldable screen. Two apps can run side by side on the phone, which can be pulled apart for a lighter carry.
Back at Samsung’s event, it wasn’t finished with the Galaxy Fold.
It also revealed the Samsung Galaxy S10, the latest iteration of its smartphone flagship device.
The S10 offers a host of new features over the S9, but starts at a higher price (£799 for the 6.1in screen version and £899 for the S10+ with a 6.4in screen).
Samsung is also releasing a “budget” version of the phone, the S10e, which starts at £669, but has a smaller screen and lacks some of the high-end features of the regular phone – like a portrait mode camera.
New in the S10 and S10+ is the “hole-punch” camera on the front, which ditches the notch at the top of the phone, and replaces it with a cut-out hole for the camera.
This means there’s no iris scanner, but there is a fingerprint sensor under the screen. A neat touch is the ability to use the S10 as a wireless charger for peripherals.
The cameras are also muchimproved and there’s a 5G version in the works.