(instrumental music)
- Folding phones are boring.
Look we've had the first wave of foldable devices
and they're neat, but you've seen all that already.
This is about what comes next
after the current generation of foldables.
Sling like the tri-fold from TCL,
a wild new concept, folding tablet, phone thing.
(techno-music)
Unlike most foldables the tri-fold has two hinges,
which lets it fold up into thirds .
You can use it as a phone,
you can unfold it once to use as a bigger screen
or fold the unfolded into a full size tablet.
It's not a half way compromise like some of the other
foldables that we've seen which basically
turn into just slightly wider phone displays.
This is a full blown tablet.
It's nearly as big as an iPad,
but you can still fit it in your pocket.
The screen folds from a 10 inch tablet
down to 6.65 inch phone.
You could also open it two-thirds the way
and ya know prop that up it'll auto rotate
so you can use in whatever orientation you want.
There's a lot of weird use cases
that you could probably use this for.
The screen on this one is a 3k panel,
but again that's just this prototype.
We have no idea if the finished version will have that,
but the tri-fold shows just how hard it's gonna be to turn
these ideas into reality.
I've gotten to play around with the prototype for a bit
and it's really rough to use right now.
It is incredibly heavy for a phone.
It's got those big metal hinges and there are three separate
batteries to power all those displays,
it's basically three phones.
And even though it's really thin as a tablet the phone mode
is super thick and that's before your worrying
about things like the software,
which is basically non-existent.
Durability which is a huge question
or price which who even knows.
(techno music)
But looking even further into the future.
TCL also had a very early mock up of a rollable phone.
This is really cool idea that's a phone that has a fully
flexible display that slides around the side
and behind the phone.
And it could roll back out and become a larger display
when you need more space.
The way it will, in theory, work
is that there's gonna be motors on the inside of the phone
and you'll press a button and it'll expand out
from a 6.75 inch display to a 7.8 inch screen.
Now that doesn't sound like a lot, but your actually getting
almost double the screen space it's almost twice as wide.
The whole system is actually pretty similar to the rollable
Oled TV that LG's been showing off for years.
Now again this is a really early concept,
it's not even a functional device, just plastic
and a screen that's literally just a sheet of paper.
Is this a good idea?
Who knows.
It does avoid some of the issues of current foldables,
like those easily breakable hinges
and the creased display which is cool.
But it's almost guaranteed to have issues of its own.
Moving parts they're tricky.
Now the tri-fold is just a proof of concept
and the plastic sliding one even more so.
You won't actually be able to buy either of these devices
and it's not clear if TCL's actually gonna make products
based on these concepts in the future.
So why should you care.
Well, first of all, because it's cool.
I mean look at this thing it's a phone that unfolds
into a giant full size tablet.
And it actually turns on and runs android,
it's like a science fiction prop.
But it's also important, because TCL is planning
on eventually making foldable and rollable phones
that might actually look like these.
Possibly as early as next year.
The company says that it's experimenting with dozens
of different form factors right now.
So it's possible that phones like these,
could be real one day.
Look phones have basically
been the same for the last decade.
Black boxes with touch screens.
Devices like the tri-fold or that sliding concept,
even if they're not here yet,
show off what the future phones
might one day look like.
And that's really exciting idea.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you want to see more videos about cool phones check out
our Galaxy S20 ultra review.
You can actually buy that one.
Check out the review.
See if you want to.
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