Foldable phones have been all the rage this year, but the new technology doesn’t come without its price. While smartphones have just started pushing up against or exceeding the $1,000 range, foldable phones will eclipse that easily. Xiaomi, a Chinese consumer electronics company, is looking to provide the newest technology at an affordable price: their Mi Fold and Mi Flex phone will cost no more than $999.
This is an astounding price given the current market. Two highly anticipated foldable phones, the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X, are expected to start at $1,980 and $2,600 respectively.
The price discrepancy is likely not due to internal specs. According to a report by GSMArena, the Mi Fold and Mi Flex will use the Snapdragon 855 SoC and come with up to 10 GB of RAM.
The price difference is thanks to their exclusive use of Visionox Technology OLED displays. Differences between this and other foldable phone OLED screens remain to be seen.
It should be noted that Xiaomi’s screen, unlike the Galaxy Fold and Mate X, folds in two places rather than one. The fold occurs closer to the edges than the center, allowing the sides to fold outward. The other phones essentially have two screens fold on top of each other.
Having the screen fold on the sides leads to some cool color coordination (see video above), but it’s not clear how exactly these half screens on the back would be used otherwise.
We’ll just have to wait and see what Xiaomi has to offer! But we are sure of one thing: the company is really setting the bar for affordability of foldable smartphone technology.
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