Not one, not two, but a trio of hinges to potentially break in OPPO's bendy concept phone OPPO has shown off its latest concept foldable phone, produced in conjunction with Japanese design studio Nendo, which uses three hinges to create a slider-style effect. The unnamed device – which remains very much not in production – uses its multiple hinges to allow the user to access varying levels of screen real estate, …
The original folding phone, the Motorola Razr (the original one from the 2000's), had one advantage - the psychological gratification of snapping the phone shut to end a call.
Modern folding phones are too complicated to do that and their complications are too subject to problems. Plus they add thickness and weight.
OPPO's phone seems to signal that the category has jumped the shark.
No, there were at least four:
1 When closed it's small enough to fit in a small pocket.
2 Open to answer/close to hang up.
3 Screen protected when phone folded and in pocket.
4 In use the mic is angled at your mouth while the speaker is next to your ear.
I still think laptop screens and monitors are the future for this. Large screens which you can fold away when not in use or when you only need a 1/3 of the screen estate. They don't need to be touchable either which deals with one of the trickier aspects of this tech currently. Also you don't need such high tolerence hinges or roller options.
I could definitely see this on a laptop. A small form factor laptop where you can fold out two additonal displays to the side to suddenly have a wide screen monitor with plenty of screen real estate. Bliss! I'd get that in a second.
But on a regular monitor. Nahh. How often have you thought "You know, what I really need now is a smaller monitor?" And apart from in IT departments, how often do you store away monitors? People tend to use monitors until they die. Then throw them away and buy the next biggest one their desk allows. Even within firms it tends to be the same way. Adding hinges to a regular monitor, No I'm afraid i dont see it.
What I imagine, especially right now with home workers, is a large wide screen (30 or 40") that you can roll up when you're finished with it. so for those folks having to use up a lot of their small living areas with double monitor setups or working on uncomfortably small screens they could roll out their working screen and get the space back at the end of the day.
Or gaming laptops, 10" screen on the commute and a 30" when on a desk.
but I see this using rolled screens rather than hinged
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It seems it never got past being a test project, but dang I would totally have loved that for work in the past (ok depending a little on the weight to lug it around).
Apparently a used test one got put up for sale on a chinese equivalent of Ebay for around €20k. Sorry, not quite worth that for me...
True, they didn't ask for it, but they do want ever bigger screens in ever smaller form factors. You can only shrink the bezels to zero and then where do you go?
It's a pity Microsoft didn't get the Surface Duo right. Stuff like "Tent mode" instead of getting that gap down to zero when unfolded. Worse, they even cut out the slot from the pixels, so any text or graphics in the middle of the hinge disappears to make the screen sort of look normal but at the expense of actual usage.
Also Microsoft, the upper and lower bezels are way too big and defeat the whole purpose of big screen in small form factor, the hinges should be hidden and colored to merge into the device. They should redo the hinge to abut the two screens with edge-wraparound screens so the screens merge visually when opened, and the device should never open beyond its flat screen mode.
Never mind, we should wait till Apple or Samsung or Huawei gets it right and then copy that.
I won't hold my breath for Microsoft, they give in early. That device won't sell so they'll kill it rather than keep trying.
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