How folding smartphones have changed: 5 years of flexibility

In fact, the very idea of ​​a foldable smartphone is not obvious. Okay, so we have a flexible polymer-coated screen – but how do we play this card? Right now, the answer seems simple, just look at the market. At the moment, two Samsung ideas are winning.

HUAWEI Mate X3

The first idea is a large folding smartphone with two screens: a small external one and a large, folding internal one. At first, the external screen performed more of an auxiliary function due to its relatively small diagonal and narrow, unusual format. Now this is a full-featured display that allows you to use the smartphone when folded as a regular all-in-one device. The internal screen simply offers the option of using the device as a small tablet with an almost square display with a diagonal of 7.5-8 inches.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6

Such devices are the majority on the market. This is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, which gave rise to a similar format (the current model is Fold6), and the thinnest HONOR Magic V3 in the world, and the relatively inexpensive (very relatively!) TECNO PHANTOM V Fold2, and the twins OPPO Find N3/OnePlus Open. Google, Xiaomi and many others presented their folding smartphones of this format. It’s easier to say who has so far managed without flexible smartphones in their portfolio (and necessarily with two screens) – at the head of this opposition is, of course, Apple.

HUAWEI Mate X6

HUAWEI also has a similar smartphone – and just now its next generation, Mate X6, is starting to hit the market. This is just an example of a folding device of a similar design, which incorporates more or less everything that can be imagined for such a gadget. There is also a body with space-inspired design and the use of unusual materials (like nylon fiber, used, for example, for body armor) and durable tempered glass Kunlun Glass 2 for the external screen; moisture protection class – IPX8.

The case is very thin – 4.6 mm when unfolded, 9.9 mm when folded. Thinner – only the already mentioned HONOR Magic V3. To cool and correctly place the antennas in a thin case, engineers had to work hard: new evaporation chambers and graphene film were used, and in general the arrangement of elements inside the case is very whimsical.

Both the internal and external screens are LTPO OLED with a frequency of up to 120 Hz, but the external one is 6.45 inches diagonal, the internal one is 7.93 inches.

The camera system is flagship without any discounts: three cameras with a resolution of 50+48+40 megapixels (standard, wide angle and periscope camera) are complemented by a special hyperspectral sensor that helps maintain the most natural color rendition. Well, the battery here is also not simple – silicon-carbon with a capacity of 5110 mAh.

Compared to its predecessor, the HUAWEI Mate X3, progress has been made in everything: the X6 has become thinner, more durable, the screens are larger, the platform is more powerful, the battery is more capacious, and the cameras are now truly flagship, in theory no worse than those of the Pura 70 Ultra or Mate 70 Pro. Let us add that the smartphone is available for pre-order from December 13 at a price of 189,999 rubles. During the period from December 13, 2024 to January 9, 2025, when ordering a smartphone, customers will receive a HUAWEI WATCH GT 5 smartwatch as a gift, as well as an additional 6 months of free warranty for screen protection.

Motorola Razr 50 Ultra

The second most common format is clamshell smartphones. There are also two screens, but the outer one only recently (starting literally last year) began to have some kind of function other than a decorative one (the small display could display notifications, but in order to react, you need to open the gadget). Gradually, this form factor, well known from the era of classic pipes, became as if gender-oriented, conventionally “feminine”. Although personally, it always seemed extremely logical to me – instead of hefty “shovels” that can be made even larger, this is a chance to get a compact (at least when folded) device. The format of “folding smartphones” itself was also launched by Samsung with its Galaxy Z Flip model (the current one is Flip6), but almost simultaneously Motorola introduced its folding phone, and then the format was picked up by HUAWEI (P50 Pocket, nova Flip), OPPO, TECNO and, more recently por, Infinix with Xiaomi. This is the second most common format.

OPPO X Find 2021

But further we will have to talk almost only about one company, HUAWEI. Because if other companies decide to experiment, then, as a rule, only in the prototype format. Although one of these is worth mentioning – OPPO X Find 2021 with a screen that extends to the sides. It looked very promising, but already in the winter of that year OPPO launched a traditional folding smartphone with two Find N screens (albeit more compact than its competitors).

HUAWEI Mate Xs 2

But HUAWEI launches its “experimental” devices directly into series – and even continues to develop them, as happened with the HUAWEI Mate X, presented with a minimum time gap from the Samsung Galaxy Fold and which, along with it, became the first serial folding smartphone. But at the same time it is completely different in philosophy. It uses not two screens, but one that folds outwards rather than inwards – thus the gadget can also be used in two formats, but for this it does not require an additional display. The latest generation of such smartphones is the HUAWEI Mate Xs 2. It has not yet been updated since 2022, and it seemed that HUAWEI had finally switched to market-tested formats.

HUAWEI Mate XT Ultimate

But that’s exactly what it seemed like – before the release of HUAWEI Mate XT Ultimate, the first triple (or double? Definitions are still complicated) folding smartphone. The principle is more or less the same as on the HUAWEI Mate Xs – there is one screen installed here, but it folds in two places, which allows you to use the smartphone in three formats at once – “classic”, in the form of a relatively standard folding smartphone with a screen of about seven inches and, in fact, a tablet with a 10.2-inch screen. We have already published an article – the first acquaintance with this very interesting device (which, along with clamshells, personally seems to me the most promising in terms of changing the user experience for the better) – I will refer you to it for a more detailed description of the device.

HUAWEI’s activity in the field of inventing new formats of foldable smartphones is both encouraging and a little sad – because we are talking about one brand, everyone else is just looking around and repeating what others are doing without taking risks. Although, it seems, there may be a lot of ideas on how exactly folding screens can be used in smartphones.