Samsung may have goofed when it comes to Foldable Phones. Regardless, it is not stopping other companies from looking into the technology.
Ahead of its I/O developer conference, Google says it’s also looking into foldable tech and has been prototyping foldable displays for quite some time, according to CNET.
“We’re definitely prototyping the technology. We’ve been doing it for a long time,” Mario Queiroz, Google’s Pixel development lead, told CNET last week in an interview. According to Querioz, however, “I don’t think there’s a clear use case yet.”
That means we shouldn’t expect a foldable Pixel any time soon, or maybe ever. “We’re prototyping foldable displays and many other new hardware technologies, and have no related product announcements to make at this time,” Querioz said in a follow-up statement.
It’s unclear how far along Google is in developing its foldable prototype or how its screen would operate when opened and closed. Samsung’s Galaxy Fold has a smaller screen on the front and opens up into a larger one on the inside. Huawei’s Mate X, another foldable, has a different design that puts its 8-inch screen on the outside.
Samsung was not quite as lucky in the full-blown foldable department. After earning itself a fair amount of positive press coverage for arriving first on the scene with a premium foldable version of its Galaxy smartphone, the company soon found out how fragile and unprepared its version of the hardware was when review units sent out to journalists began breaking in unexpected ways last month. The company has since pushed the release date indefinitely to iron out the challenge.
Hopefully, Google takes its time and doesn’t push out an official foldable Pixel phone before its ready for prime time.
