The first foldable smartphones with flexible displays should begin shipping in the next few months. But they won’t all fold the same way.

Samsung’s Galaxy Fold closes up like a book, with the screen on the inside, which means the company had to slap a secondary display on the outside that would let you use the phone in its folded state. Huawei’s Mate X and Oppo’s foldable prototype have screens that stay on the outside and wrap around the phone when you close it, letting you use half the tablet screen as a smartphone display when the phone is folded.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The folks at The Verge have put together a nearly comprehensive look at all the different sorts of foldable smartphone designs we’ve seen over the past few months… and attempts to come up with descriptive, memorable names for each folding style.

The results are… a bit interesting. Think you can come up with better names? Sound off in the comments.

The Verge

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6 replies on “Lilbits 354: What do you call these foldable smartphone designs?”

  1. Just because it’s the verge I figure I ought to at least try to encourage people to think for themselves, so without looking at their article, here’s my names for all these form factors, left to right, top to bottom, as English is written:

    Fold in, 2 screen; flexible smartwatch (that only becomes a phone when you pair some headphones to it); Flexible Flip Phone; fold out; flat fold out; flip-open second screen accessory; wrist-wearable flexphone; flippable flexphone; fold in, wrap out; total flexphone; scroll flexphone; segmented stretchphone.

    Although looking at the article it looks like they didn’t take the naming QUITE as seriously as I did.

  2. ”Gearbest left its database unsecured, payment information and other customer data easily accessible”

    This is why I’m still hesitant to buying online outside of a select few online retailers like Amazon (still avoid 3rd party sellers).

    1. This seems like major news. Especially for this site where I’ve read many commenters talking buying stuff from Gearbest. I’m surprised this data breach is buried inside a Lilbits article.

      1. Yeah, based on comments of previous Lilbits posts, it seems like most folks just read the headline. At the very least, Gearbest leaking customer financial information should have been the top story and put into the headline.

    2. Good thing I’ve been too wary of buying anything from Gearbest. I also aboid Geekbuying and AliExpress.

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