2019 is going to be a big year for foldable smartphones, with the Royole FlexPai debuting at CES and both Samsung and Huawei planning to show foldables of their own soon. Now we can add another company's name to the list of those working on a foldable.
TCL, the company behind BlackBerry and Alcatel phones, is said to be working on a total of five foldable devices. That's according to CNET, who claims to have seen renders and patent filings for the quartet of foldable products.
Two of the devices are tablets, one with a display that folds inward like a clamshell and another with a screen on the outside like the aforementioned Royole FlexPai. The two smartphones have similar designs, but they're said to fold with a horizontal line like a flip phone. The fifth device may be the most interesting, as it's said to be a tall, skinny phone that can curve around your wrist like a smartwatch.
Little is known about the products and the images are said to be preliminary, so it's possibly that TCL could change the foldables before release or decide not to launch them at all. A TCL executive did say that the company plans to launch its first foldable in 2020, so it'll be at least a year before we see any foldable from TCL hit the market.
Foldables are all the rage now, so it's no surprise to hear that TCL is at least playing around with some foldable designs. When it comes to the five designs that TCL is working on now, the smartphone that can cuff around your wrist sounds pretty intriguing, giving you a full phone when you need it that can also be stored on your wrist and worn like a watch when you don't need it. It'd be interesting to see how well the device could wrap around your wrist and how quickly you could cuff it and uncuff it.
Are you interested in foldable devices?