Nearly every company is working on a foldable phone and you can bet that even those who say they aren’t are at least doing some R&D into it — afterall, who wanted to be left behind when a new trend takes off. Now patents have revealed that Google are at least doing their due diligence and investigating foldable Pixel phones.
The folks at Patently Mobile have discovered a patent application from Google for a foldable smartphone – the flip phone variety. According to the patent application the foldable Pixel will fold inwards from top to bottom, just like those flip phones we all used to know and love.
The patent applications also show a double foldable phone it seems which would allow for a screen on the outside of the phone when it is folded down — we cannot image the amount of engineering required to have two hinges on a foldable smartphone.
Google also discuss the usual boring bits such as the radius of the curve in the folded part of the display, something that current foldable technology limits. You would expect in the future this would change, if foldable phones take off.
Whether this foldable Pixel phone from Google ever sees the light of day is of course unknown and to be honest, not expected but it is good to see Google at least doing the basic groundwork should they ever want to release a foldable Pixel.
Is anyone convinced by the apparent use cases of a foldable smartphone? Are you but the price is scaring you to death?
Maybe they should focus on getting their normal Pixel phones working well first…
Completely agree…currently scrolling through this article and the lag as I scroll down the page is horrendous. Not to mention the camera shutter lag I’m getting now. Think I’ll just trade in for an S10+ and wait to see what 2019’s pixels offer because the 3xl just isn’t doing it for me :/
Google’s hardware news is complete useless. If you ask me they will improve the notch to a tear-drop notch and I will not it.