At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, TCL unveiled a slew of foldable phone and tablet concepts to test the waters for a production device debuting as early as 2020.
One of those half dozen prototypes was a clamshell-style handset that folded more or less over itself, leaving a small gap between the inward and downward portions of the display and an exposed upward-facing lip toward the bottom.
The handset — DragonHinge — was off-limits at Mobile World Congress. But after begging and pleading the folks at TCL, I managed to get my hands on a unit this week at IFA 2019 in Berlin.
First things first: DragonHinge isn’t a hinge per se, but an R&D project in three parts. It refers to the 0 – 180 degree fully inward foldable AMOLED display built by TCL; the flexible metal join that frames it; and the software that will intelligently bifurcate, expand, or switch between apps on the display. More
