- Folding phones are boring.

Look we've had the first wave of foldable devices

and they're neat, but you've seen all that already.

This is about what comes next

after the current generation of foldables.

Sling like the tri-fold from TCL,

a wild new concept, folding tablet, phone thing.

(techno-music)

Unlike most foldables the tri-fold has two hinges,

which lets it fold up into thirds .

You can use it as a phone,

you can unfold it once to use as a bigger screen

or fold the unfolded into a full size tablet.

It's not a half way compromise like some of the other

foldables that we've seen which basically

turn into just slightly wider phone displays.

This is a full blown tablet.

It's nearly as big as an iPad,

but you can still fit it in your pocket.

The screen folds from a 10 inch tablet

down to 6.65 inch phone.

You could also open it two-thirds the way

and ya know prop that up it'll auto rotate

so you can use in whatever orientation you want.

There's a lot of weird use cases

that you could probably use this for.

The screen on this one is a 3k panel,

but again that's just this prototype.

We have no idea if the finished version will have that,

but the tri-fold shows just how hard it's gonna be to turn

these ideas into reality.

I've gotten to play around with the prototype for a bit

and it's really rough to use right now.

It is incredibly heavy for a phone.

It's got those big metal hinges and there are three separate

batteries to power all those displays,

it's basically three phones.

And even though it's really thin as a tablet the phone mode

is super thick and that's before your worrying

about things like the software,

which is basically non-existent.

Durability which is a huge question

or price which who even knows.

(techno music)

But looking even further into the future.

TCL also had a very early mock up of a rollable phone.

This is really cool idea that's a phone that has a fully

flexible display that slides around the side

and behind the phone.

And it could roll back out and become a larger display

when you need more space.

The way it will, in theory, work

is that there's gonna be motors on the inside of the phone

and you'll press a button and it'll expand out

from a 6.75 inch display to a 7.8 inch screen.

Now that doesn't sound like a lot, but your actually getting

almost double the screen space it's almost twice as wide.

The whole system is actually pretty similar to the rollable

Oled TV that LG's been showing off for years.

Now again this is a really early concept,

it's not even a functional device, just plastic

and a screen that's literally just a sheet of paper.

Is this a good idea?

Who knows.

It does avoid some of the issues of current foldables,

like those easily breakable hinges

and the creased display which is cool.

But it's almost guaranteed to have issues of its own.

Moving parts they're tricky.

Now the tri-fold is just a proof of concept

and the plastic sliding one even more so.

You won't actually be able to buy either of these devices

and it's not clear if TCL's actually gonna make products

based on these concepts in the future.

So why should you care.

Well, first of all, because it's cool.

I mean look at this thing it's a phone that unfolds

into a giant full size tablet.

And it actually turns on and runs android,

it's like a science fiction prop.

But it's also important, because TCL is planning

on eventually making foldable and rollable phones

that might actually look like these.

Possibly as early as next year.

The company says that it's experimenting with dozens

of different form factors right now.

So it's possible that phones like these,

could be real one day.

Look phones have basically

been the same for the last decade.

Black boxes with touch screens.

Devices like the tri-fold or that sliding concept,

even if they're not here yet,

show off what the future phones

might one day look like.

And that's really exciting idea.

Thanks so much for watching.

If you want to see more videos about cool phones check out

our Galaxy S20 ultra review.

You can actually buy that one.

Check out the review.

See if you want to.

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