OnePlus Foldable Smartphone Not Coming Anytime Soon: Here's Why

OnePlus has conducted a special and separate event on the sidelines of CES 2020. During the event, the company has unveiled its Concept One smartphone and the highlights of the phone were the invisible rear camera setup which is achieved by the help of electrochromic glass panel. The Verge has managed to pull off an interview with the company CEO, Pete Lau for their podcast.

In the interview, Lau was asked about his opinion on the latest trend of foldable smartphones. On this Lau responded, that the company is looking into it but it seems that the cons are still at superior to pros, that is the reason by the company hasn't pursued to develop such smartphones. The entire interview was transcribed by Eric Gass, Lau's interpreter.

According to a portion from the interview, the reason behind not pursuing the foldable smartphone category for Lau and his team is because of the current scenario of the foldable displays. The foldable smartphones are still not delivering clean and crisp fold. This leads to screen creasing and creates issues for users which Lau doesn't want on its OnePlus branding smartphone. The foldable display technology needs to be developed more and it seems that Lau is not ready to take any risk to jump into this category so earlier.

This response also clarifies that OnePlus is not planning for a foldable smartphone anytime soon. So it will be better for us not to expect anything from OnePlus in foldable phone segment.

In the interview, Lua was also asked about the implementation of foldable display on Motorola Razr where the screen moves out a bit to avoid creasing. However, it seems that Lua is still not impressed with this design as well. He said the display which is used for foldable design is still out of plastic and it doesn't have scratch-resistant properties like an original glass.

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