This is the cheapest foldable phone on the market
This rival to the Samsung Galaxy Fold will turn heads
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Meet theRoyole Flexpai, a foldable smartphone first revealed at CES 2019 that hoped to rub shoulders with devices such as theSamsung Galaxy Fold.
“[This] proof-of-concept device shows that flexible smartphones are the future - but the poor performance in the hand and the chunky design mean that it doesn’t wow in every way,”TechRadar’sGareth Beavis said in his hands on review.
Fast forward twelve months and it seems the phone wasn’t nearly as popular as Royole had hoped. The phoneis now available for just under $1,000(roughly £780/AU$1530), excluding delivery and potential shipping fees, import duties and taxes.
Have you managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specification? Let us know and we’ll tip our hat to you.
Royole Flexpai -$999.99 from AliexpressThe Royole Flexpai had a noble vision, but its execution leaves much to be desired. The fully flexible display is admittedly impressive, but doesn’t make up for the clunky feel in the hand. It’s a nifty proof-of-concept, but you’d be better to splash out on a superior foldable device.
The Royole Flexpai runs Android 9.0 with the company’s own proprietary UI, and is powered by a Snapdragon 855 CPU, 6GB of RAM and 128GB onboard storage (an 8GB version with 256GB memory is also available).
The fully flexible display - which bends on the outside - is what sets it apart from the competition (Galaxy Fold,Huawei Mate X,Galaxy Z Flip). The device, which sport two cameras, can also be transformed into a full tablet with a 7.8-inch display diagonal, which is almost as large as a standard tablet (such as theiPad Mini) and great for business users.
Note that the phone only supports English and Chinese at the moment, with no other language options available. It’s also incompatible withGoogle Play Store(though you should in theory be able to sideload apps) and Aliexpress won’t offer refunds to buyers who fail read the small print.
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Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.
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