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Door staff@engadget.com (Beatriz Valero de Urquia) - 18 Oct 2026
Trend pieces declared 2019 the "year of the foldable." It was not, though those 12 months did provide the first meaningful strides in the technology. The first device of this type to make a splash in the headlines was designed by an unknown Chinese display manufacturer: Royole. The company presented the FlexPai at CES 2019, with all the pomp and circumstance that "the world's first commercially available foldable smartphone" required. It was a feat of technology. It captivated the audience, if only momentarily. For all its charms, Engadget's reporters at the time found the Royole FlexPai to be "rough around the edges," strangely sized and, overall, "janky." Regardless, it demonstrated that flexible OLED could ship in a real product.
Later that year came a second attempt. Samsung's first Galaxy Fold was released in February 2019, kick-starting a series of unfortunate events for the phone manufacturer. If you were there, you might remember the influx of terrible reviews that followed. Despite a high price (just under $2,000), many reviewers complained that their phone screens had broken after little use, and it was revealed that most of them had peeled off a layer of plastic that was acting as a screen protector. The phone's fragility forced Samsung to delay the public launch and recall all units sent to reviewers so it could re-engineer the product. The new version was, however, only "somewhat" more sturdy. Overall, those first Samsung phones showed the importance of perfecting the crease, hinge durability and screen resistance as key to the success of foldable phones.
The next step showed the route not taken. Huawei's Mate X, presented at MWC 2019, folded outward instead of inward. It used a single high-resolution display that wrapped around the outside of the phone. The resulting design was extremely elegant. The problem? The screen could easily be scratched and damaged. On top of that, the phone was never sold in the United States due to the sanctions imposed by then-President Donald Trump on Chinese technologies. Still, for as striking as the Mate X was, the company's next foldable, the Mate X2, used the inward fold introduced by Royole and Samsung, showing that different does not necessarily mean better.
Later that year came a second attempt. Samsung's first Galaxy Fold was released in February 2019, kick-starting a series of unfortunate events for the phone manufacturer. If you were there, you might remember the influx of terrible reviews that followed. Despite a high price (just under $2,000), many reviewers complained that their phone screens had broken after little use, and it was revealed that most of them had peeled off a layer of plastic that was acting as a screen protector. The phone's fragility forced Samsung to delay the public launch and recall all units sent to reviewers so it could re-engineer the product. The new version was, however, only "somewhat" more sturdy. Overall, those first Samsung phones showed the importance of perfecting the crease, hinge durability and screen resistance as key to the success of foldable phones.
The next step showed the route not taken. Huawei's Mate X, presented at MWC 2019, folded outward instead of inward. It used a single high-resolution display that wrapped around the outside of the phone. The resulting design was extremely elegant. The problem? The screen could easily be scratched and damaged. On top of that, the phone was never sold in the United States due to the sanctions imposed by then-President Donald Trump on Chinese technologies. Still, for as striking as the Mate X was, the company's next foldable, the Mate X2, used the inward fold introduced by Royole and Samsung, showing that different does not necessarily mean better.