Victory, Royole: The FlexPai is the first folding phone we’ve seen - hogansper1992

Mark Hachman / IDG

For the moment, Royole can boast something that smartphone giant Samsung tin can't: The littler consumer electronics company has a foldable Android smartphone, the FlexPai, and Samsung doesn't.

While Samsung reportedly has a folding speech sound under development, the FlexPai is here. While the FlexPai doesn't quite a fold flat—the rolling flexible joint is more like the Grade-constructed Book than anything else—it does get compact enough to concord a pocket, and unfolds to yield a tablet-sized 7.8-inch screen. The 1920×1440 screen didn't blow me away in terms of resolution, merely IT's bright and clear sufficiency to satisfy most users.

Royole FlexPai — The FlexPai definitely, well, flexes.

Let's get something knocked out of the way: You've never detected of Royole. Neither had we. Neither, presumptively, throw American carriers. Royole with ambition announced a price: $1,300, but that's the price it's presumptively charging for the developer posture it showed off here at CES.

It's not just clear whether $1,300—which would put it in the upper echelon of smartphone pricing—will actually stay on when and if the device at long last ships. The goal now is fo Royole to convince carriers to offer it.

In a brief hands connected with the device, the FlexPai was a little stiff to unfold and flexure, though that's a small price to pay. Royole executives tell us that they've dependable the AMOLED folding screens to basically allow for six years' deserving of folding the screen back and forth, more or less 20 times per day. In that respect didn't seem to glucinium any straining virtually the small portion of the covert with the most physical bend, either.

Inwardly the FlexPai is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, 6GB of Random-access memory, and either 128GB operating room 256GB of store, according to a company specification piece of paper. There's a MicroSD card slot tucked into ace pull of the device. Oddly, Royole quotes some a 16Mpixel as well as a 20Mpixel camera, and there are ii cameras right next to one another. The twist is that either camera fire function as a front-facingor rear-lining camera, due to the fold—and you can figure the screen in either constellation.

The FlexPai (a.k.a. the RY1201D) doesn't use virginal Android, merely a "Water OS" skin that offers its own UI. We didn't have enough time with the device to notice whatever senior features.

About the only question we're left wondering about—well, including customers—is the battery spirit, which wasn't specified. A large luck of the device appears to accommodate the flexible joint, and information technology's not clear how large the battery pack(s) are. Even if you never have a chance to pip out, it's still unitary of the more challenging devices we've seen here at CES.

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As PCWorld's senior editor, Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip technology, among other beat generation. He has erst written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.