ZTE announces the Axon M, an AT&T exclusive folding phone
http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/17/zte-axon-m-hands-zte-actually-made-kind-good-foldable-phone/
I just threw up a little... I hope this isn't the desire for folding screen phones. Granted, probably a different approach than what Samsung is going for, but still... woof.
I disagree, this IS the way to go for the near future. The issue is that they need to make it not have bezels so there is no center seam when open. This seems more like a prototype than anything else. But even with the bezel there is a lot of functionality. Mirroring the screens and bending it like a tent to share content or play games for example. Or just simply having 2 screens to multi task. Not everything has to be stretched across the 2 screens to be useful.
The reason I say foreseeable future is we don't have foldable screens yet, not truly foldable. What we have today are bendable screens. If you see all the prototypes and even the concepts they just bend in a radius, and leave behind a significant radius which means something somewhere is going to be very thick. Also even if we did have foldable, that will almost certainly be plastic and not glass. I don't know about you, but I'm not necessarily looking forward to going back to plastic screens.
But besides the prototype nature of this phone, it has other shortcomings. I still think it's the way to go, but maybe next year with the Axon M2 or something. One of the ZTE team already said they predict the seam will be gone in 2 years. They also need to reduce the top/bottom bezels a lot and of course make it a bit thinner.
Now long term the dream is still foldable screens, but I highly doubt a viable, truly foldable, mass produced phone will be out sooner than 5-7 years, and that's being optimistic. Although the more I think about it, the more IMO this is a superior design to a truly foldable screen, even when that technology does come around.
