A few weeks ago, Samsung was the only known smartphone brand to be working on the first-ever foldable smartphone expected to launch in early 2019. Huawei, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer, came up as a surprise hinting towards its hyper-accelerated development process which it follows in order to churn out smartphones with latest techs such as a foldable OLED display in this case. But, Samsung and Huawei may not be alone in the slew of who’s gonna launch the first-ever foldable smartphone.
According to the latest speculations, Xiaomi and Oppo are developing their own foldable smartphone for which, the timeframe is somewhere in the first quarter of 2019 before Samsung unveils its one of the most anticipated smartphone that ‘folds’. Samsung has been working on its foldable phone for more than five years now and has been delaying the date of launch in order to provide the best experience of a foldable phone to its customers. Samsung has also quoted a price tag of around $2,000 USD for its Samsung Galaxy F as it is known for now.
This sparked the great competition to reveal the first foldable phone and like always, Huawei came to the forefront on the web with its ambitions to launch a foldable smartphone before Samsung could launch its Galaxy F. Huawei has partnered another Chinese panel maker BOE Technologies which will design its foldable OLED displays and the device might launch as early as by the end of this year.
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Oppo have created a buzz about its own ‘foldable smartphones’ for which, although there is no official time frame stated yet but experts believe it could be launched sometime early next year. Xiaomi has suddenly scaled up its sales by limiting its profit margin of 5% on each unit sold which is the reason why Xiaomi could end up selling its foldable phone in a cheaper rate compared to the rivals in the same wagon. Similarly, few patents were spotted from Oppo which means that this Chinese brand is also preparing for its foldable phone that takes the total of foldable phones to be released in 2019 to four.
According to GizmoChina, Oppo and Xiaomi have already started procuring the flexible OLED displays and other components required to create a foldable phone and might approach other Chinese suppliers or the bigwigs such as Japan Display or LG Display to provide the displays. Samsung which started working on the ambitious foldable phone project in 2013 will launch a fold-in design phone which will be followed by Huawei too. On the contrary, Xiaomi and Oppo are eyeing for fold-out design phones that will give more screen size and other features as well.
Samsung was one of the first smartphone manufacturers to introduce in-display fingerprint scanner, however, it dropped the idea and has opted for physical fingerprint scanners. On the other hand, Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo, and other Chinese brands have already launched a bunch of smartphones sporting an in-display fingerprint scanner which is something the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S10 and Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus will sport too.
Apart from the four major releases from four major brands, LG and Motorola too have patented their idea about foldable phones and might come up with their own foldable smartphones next year.
