During the Mobile World Congress, scheduled to take place in Barcelona in the last week of February, LG will unveil its foldable smartphone. With the trick
LG will present at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February a foldable smartphone. 2019, therefore, confirms itself as the year of the "foldable". To reveal it in Korea is the site Naver, which also adds that LG will not build a phone with a single screen that folds but with two screens side by side.
This will allow the brand to bring to market a foldable smartphone cheaper than the models already seen or expected to be presented in the coming weeks. The FlexPai, anticipated in late 2018 and officially presented during CES 2019, should be priced at around 1,500 euros. Similar figure for the Samsung Galaxy F, equipped with a fully flexible OLED screen, and for the Motorola RAZR, "re-edition" of the best-selling clamshell phone ever that should be presented in February also in Barcelona.
Why 2 screens instead of 1
To make a foldable screen for cell phones the technology of choice is OLED. LG, as well as Samsung, has developed its own OLED screen but, like all OLEDs, it is difficult and expensive to build. Hence the ploy to build a smartphone that is yes foldable, but not OLED. According to rumors, then LG will build a device with two screens of 3.5 inches each, to offer a screen size of 7 inches in total. Two 3.5-inch screens cost the manufacturer more than a single 6.5/7-inch screen, but still less than a truly flexible OLED display. Such a device, in fact, could be sold for less than 800 euros.
Will it be successful?
From a marketing point of view, however, LG will have to face the fact that putting two screens side by side in a single device is nothing new and, moreover, those who have done it in the past have not achieved good sales results at all. Like Sony, with its Tablet P, or Kyocera, with the Echo. Both devices came out in 2011 and at the time the technology didn't allow for miracles. Today LG could present a much better foldable smartphone, with the two screens that almost completely fill the shells and when side by side offer a usability similar to that of a single screen. This foldable smartphone from LG, then, could have motion sensor to allow the user to perform certain operations without touching the screen.
But the desirability of such a phone remains doubtful. If it were to be successful and if it were to prove truly comfortable to use, then it would open up for foldable smartphones that market to which in 2011 they could not yet aspire. And if foldable smartphones were to become a profitable niche, then foldable OLED phones might have a better chance of making their way into the hearts (and wallets) of consumers: they would represent the cutting edge of this unique category of devices.