Chinese display maker Royole unveils first foldable smartphone with a price tag in line with iPhones

Royole Corp, a Chinese technology unicorn that makes the world’s thinnest full-colour flexible display, unveiled a foldable smartphone on Wednesday, offering a screen the size of an iPad-sized tablet with the ability to fold up so it fits in the palm of your hand.

Called the “FlexPai”, it comes with a 7.8-inch high-resolution screen with thickness of 7.6mm, the largest smartphone display size on the market today. But the retail price is also high, with the top end model going for 12,999 yuan (US$1,865), which compares to 8,999 yuan as the starting price for Apple’s latest flagship iPhones.

Royole’s lightweight and ultra-thin device, one tenth the weight of an LCD and one fifth the thickness, can be bent more than 200,000 times without breaking because of the materials used, Bill Liu Zihong, 35, co-founder, chairman and chief executive of the company said in Beijing on Wednesday.

“It is a historical moment we have been waiting for years [to see],” said Liu, who believes the technology will prove popular as it caters to the needs of consumers who want a large display-smartphone that is still easy to carry.

Royole’s foldable phone, believed to be the first on the market, comes at a time when global smartphone brands are already looking for ways to equip flexible displays on their devices as they seek to update current handset designs that have largely remained the same since Apple introduced its first iPhone in 2007.