OPPO comes in the foldable smartphone race. It seems that technology is moving its interests from usual to foldable and flexible displays. A new patent from OPPO shows a mobile phone with a continuous foldable display. It can be unfolded into a tablet. The camera system is a particularly striking feature.
It seems as if every major tech company is currently busy developing a foldable mobile device. ZTE has, for example, the axon M at the start and Samsung is working well in the so-called Galaxy X. Now OPPO joins as another manufacturer and has recently patented a similar mobile phone design. But not only two halves of the display are lined up here.
What are detailed specifications of OPPO foldable smartphone?
Instead, it uses a foldable display in the middle. There is still a hinge on the back, but the front is a continuous screen. So there’s no ugly black bar separating two halves of the screen. When folded, the device looks like a regular smartphone, which can be expanded into a tablet.
The patent images show a vertical dual camera system on the left side of the OPPO device. The right side has a camera-shaped cutout on the back. It would be conceivable that the camera fits in there when the device is folded. So the lens could act both as a primary camera on the back and as a front camera.
The edge of the display is relatively wide at the top and bottom edge, but you can hardly see it on the two sides. A fingerprint sensor is, it seems, not installed. Speaker and camera are mounted on two different sides. Further technical details or design features are not yet known.
As you know, a company can get a patent for everything – it does not necessarily mean that it will start building such a device. Nevertheless, it would be a smart move by OPPO, as it is already close to other companies on the heels. A spokesman for Samsung had recently said that folding a cell phone would make the foldable part a particularly significant technical hurdle. A release before 2019 is therefore out of the question.