Foldable Smartphones are the Future?

As of now, it seems that the smartphone industry has reached its peak. It is running out of new features to include into their offerings and some have even started to remove some of the essentials. There doesn’t seem like there’s very little room for improvement now. We have our perfectly designed smartphones with top notch specs and amazing features. At least both Samsung and LG seems to be done with the current design of smartphones because if the rumors are to be believed, Samsung Galaxy X is going to be a foldable smartphone, which work both as a smartphone and as a tablet. LG has also filed a patent for foldable smartphone so they are definitely joining in on the action as well. With two of the industry giants changing up their outlook, it won’t come as a surprise if others decided to follow suit. When touch screens were initially introduced, not a lot of people were willing to go with it, but soon it became a norm and now, it is near impossible to find an old-school phone. It seems that the industry is now done with simple touch screen smartphones, and is looking to combine them with tablets.

Much Needed Innovation

This, in my opinion is a much need innovation because quite frankly, the phone reveals had become extremely boring as of late. You had your run of the mill features that you see every year. There is one or two surprises but they aren’t but they are pretty minor. Foldable smartphones will do two things. First of all, it will bring life back to the smartphones reveals once again as developers will have more to work with. Furthermore, it will remove the need for tablets. Anyone who has been using tablets know how annoying it is to carry them around the entire time especially when your work relies on them. Moreover, they have limited battery timing as compared to regular smartphones and that can also be pretty bothersome. However, with foldable smartphones, both the smartphone and tabs will combine, and this problem might get resolved. The battery will be increased to accommodate both modes and people who prefer one or the other will be able to enjoy both of them without having to purchase two separate devices.

More Power

The power in the current smartphones has also stagnated and it has reached a point where we are witnessing incredibly small enhancements over the year. With bigger device though, the manufacturers will be able to increase the number of cores, which will automatically result in better performance. Tabs and phones combination may not appeal to the general audience at first, but it will definitely become a huge deal once it is out in the market. With both Samsung and LG bringing in foldable smartphones, it won’t be long before we see Apple joining in as well. With Apple, you can always expect a couple of surprises so there will be constant improvements too. Unlike current smartphones, there is a lot of room for enhancements and additional features in a foldable smartphone. Due to its larger size, it most likely will be capable of performing a lot of tasks smoothly and will be able to boast more powerful processor. With better processing power, better GPU, better CPU, etc. it is bound to get attention from the consumers around the globe. As mentioned above, this is a much needed innovation and will add a new layer to smartphone industry.

Gaming Potential

Most of the smartphone apps are catered towards casual gamers and the hardcore games that are available on the platform suffer from a lot of issues or they are couple of decades old. The foldable smartphone, with its excessive power and improved GPU might even be able to support games that had higher visual fidelity. Some of the PS2/Xbox era games are already available on mobile phones, but it’s about time Xbox 360 and PS3 titles made their way on to the smartphones as well. Not all of them of course, but some of them can be ported to smartphones if they are actually capable of running them. This will obviously give more exposure to gaming as a whole and with more exposure, more developers will be willing to port their games on to the foldable smartphones. Five to six years ago, it was predicted that most of gaming would take place on mobile and they have been right, the gaming percentage on smartphone is incredibly high. However, that still does not include the hardcore gamers. They still have their consoles and PC for gaming and rightly so. They have no need to spend a ton of money on a smartphone just to play a decade old game. This is why, improvement in GPU and CPU will help a lot. More power on the smartphones would mean more games will be capable of running onto it and that’s a huge deal. It will attract quality developers, which is something that has been lacking on smartphones.

Pricing

This is a bundle of smartphone and a tablet, so it will need more power, more battery, better processor, better GPU, better camera, etc. Everything needs to be top notch and has to work on the highest level, which means that these new foldable smartphones will be extremely expensive. The high-end smartphones are already costing around $1000, so it wouldn’t really be a surprise if the foldable smartphones are twice that price. It would be annoying at first, as not a lot of people have this kind of cash to throw around, but with time, more budgeted categories will be introduced. As with every invention, the goal is to bring in as many people as you can and make your product more mainstream. Smartphones were able to achieve this feat quite nicely and I am confident that foldable smartphones would also be able to gain their footing. It will not be a smooth road as a lot of people will question the need for them, but they develop a niche for themselves and if they drop the price and become in range of even an average user, then they can easily beat smartphones as well. What the future actually holds, we cannot know. However, one thing is for certain, foldable smartphones will mark a new era for the industry as a whole.