Royole FlexPai, the world's first foldable phone, bends over backward at CES 2019
Phones
[MUSIC]
And the world's technology, when we have a new smartphone or device or tablet.
A lot of us have this undeniable urge to just try and destroy it.
You see it on YouTube.
There's a new tablet, new device, someone grabs it, bends it, breaks the screen.
This phone, the Royole FlexPai, claims to have a screen that can't be broken or shattered.
And that's because it is one of the world's first flexible phones.
It bends.
Royal first brought this phone to us back in November, where we saw it bending for the first time at a meeting in San Francisco.
Here at CES 2019, it's largely the same phone, but there are a few software improvements.
That's important, because the first time we saw the phone, we had a few issues with it sort of, when you bend it, registering fingerprints and Changing what menu you're on.
That still happens a bit, but overall the phone seems to do a pretty good job of knowing when to change modes and what you're doing.
For instance, right now we're looking at a back screen that shows you some basic information.
But if you flip it around, the phone's usually pretty good at knowing what side you're looking at and showing you the correct menu.
The phone is technically running Android 9, but Royole's built its own framework over it it calls Water OS, largely because of how, when you open the phone, the icons tend to flow across the two screens.
When you do have it closed, it'll add up some special features just for the specific mode.
On here, on the side, where it bends, you've got a couple of shortcuts that take you to the camera or a voice recorder app.
Or things like your checklist.
One of the things I really like about it is how it utilizes just one phone, whereas most smartphones have a camera on the front and the back for selfies.
The [UNKNOWN] just keeps the one camera on the backside, and if you want to take a selfie, it tells you to switch the phone over so it can use the front facing camera and get that glorious shot right there.
As a flexible phone, it has a couple of design elements I'm just not used to seeing on phones.
For instance, it needs to be flexible not just on the screen, but on the back as well.
So in addition to the hard plastic we're used to experience with our phones, there's this little membrane that bends.
And it makes sense, that's pretty much the only way you could do it, but it does give you a different texture and feel of the back than you might be used to with a normal device.
Royal's water OS actually does a bunch of really cool things to make the folding phone experience work, but it's definitely far from perfect.
Multiple times when I opened the phone, my fingers would be touching various elements on the screen, and that would open apps during the folding process, leaving me in a repeated situation where when I open the phone I'd wind up on a completely different app or screen than when I started opening Putting the phone.
It's awkward and it's kinda janky.
The specs haven't changed at all since we first saw this device back in November.
It still has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 series processor and up to 8 gigabytes of RAM with up to 512 gigabytes of storage depending on the model.
Even so, the Royole FlexPai is still a really exciting device.
This isn't a concept, this isn't a prototype.
This is a real foldable phone you can buy right now, and you can do this all you want without destroying it.
That's pretty cool.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
