Most of the upcoming smartphones may flip open to reveal their screen and fold up when you are ready to put it away, just like the 90’s clamshell phones.
After Samsung and Xiaomi and many other brands, now Apple is said to be planning on launching a folding phone.
According to a top Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the foldable iPhone will achieve an amazing goal of 15 to 20 million units in 2023. This new folding iPhone might have an 8 inch foldable OLED display which is a screen slightly larger than the 7.9 inch iPad mini or the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 which sports a 7.6 inches display.
In an effort to come up with something new, innovative, and exciting, these phone makers are introducing these folding phones. For years, tech companies have experimented with new phone designs driven partly by consumer surveys, which made them manufacture bigger displays, bigger batteries, and better cameras.
Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi have already introduced extravagant folding phone models which make them relatively inaccessible to most consumers. Apple definitely needs to overcome many hurdles.
Apple might be using silver nanowire technology for the touch interface, which will give the company a “long-term competitive advantage” over Samsung’s current Y-OCTA (Youm On-Cell Touch AMOLED) technology. Kuo said that the future foldable devices will require touch technology that supports multiple folds, rolls, medium to large size display, and durability. If we look at these requirements, the silver nanowire is considered superior to the Y-Octa.
Apple has been experimenting with silver nanowire technology for years in iPads and Apple Watches.
Durability has been the biggest challenge for folding phones, with Samsung delaying the launch of its Galaxy Fold in 2019 to deal with numerous engineering issues.
As per the report, Apple has tested two different kinds of folding phones, a fold-out hybrid tablet, similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 and another with a clamshell design, much like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip.
In early 2020, a patent by Apple surfaced that would theoretically allow the foldable display to bend in the middle without creating excessive stress on the panel. This indicates that Apple is trying to achieve durability and extend the life of the display, and maybe not make the mistakes made by Samsung initially.
Again, sometime last year, yet another Apple patent describing a “joint operating mode” had surfaced which would allow a single-screen device to be supplemented by a magnetically-connected secondary display. It is more like Microsoft Surface Duo and not Samsung Galaxy Fold.
If we look back in time, yet another patent by Apple depicts a device with a flexible display that closes leaving a small strip at the bottom exposed for notifications and other easy-access options.
Well, folding phones do already cost a fortune, and now that Apple is developing one, it will definitely be ridiculously expensive. However, high price tags never stopped people from buying Apple products so it will be interesting to see what Apple comes up with, and will Apple be able to deliver a value-for-money product as always?
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