A smartphone that transforms into a tablet by folding out two parts of its display bent behind its back has been unveiled by Xiaomi.
The Chinese technology company revealed the prototype in a post to the social media site Weibo. It promised the “double-folding” device was coming and asked the public to help name it.
Samsung and the start-up Royole have previously unveiled flexible-screened phones of their own.
But they only folded at a single point.
“It is very interesting that Xiaomi has adopted a three-way folding option on its prototype,” said Ben Wood, from the consultancy CCS Insight.
“It is hard to judge the relative benefits of this versus a single fold and it will depend considerably on the user interface that Xiaomi chooses to adopt as it opens the ability to have a three-quarter screen option.
“However, it certainly means there is an additional point of failing. The fold is typically the area where there are most likely to be problems over time.”
Rumours of the device’s existence began to circulate at the start of the month after the journalist Evan Blass posted a separate video of the handset to Twitter. However, he was unable to verify it was real.
Can’t speak to the authenticity of this video or device, but it’s allegedly made by Xiaomi, I’m told. Hot new phone, or gadget porn deepfake? pic.twitter.com/qwFogWiE2F— Evan Blass (@evleaks) January 3, 2019
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