OPPO may announce a foldable smartphone in 3 months

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2018 will be remembered as the year when smartphone manufacturers began to push the boundaries of bezel-less designs. We’ve seen display notches, sliders, and we’re about to get display holes. Each of these design decisions allows for smartphones to have higher screen-to-body ratios while still maintaining a manageable footprint. But there’s still a clear difference between smartphones and tablets, and phablets just aren’t large enough for some people’s media consumption habits. To solve that problem, some manufacturers are beginning to experiment with foldable displays. Samsung plans to announce their foldable smartphone sometime next year, but they’ve already teased it barely a month ago. Now, it looks like OPPO is planning on launching their own smartphone with a foldable display.

OPPO’s product manager Chuck Wang told Tweakers that the company is planning to announce a foldable mobile device at Mobile World Congress 2019 which takes place at the end of February in Barcelona, Spain. Unfortunately, that’s all we know about the upcoming device—the specifications, software, release date, and pricing are all unknown. Most of the details will likely be announced at MWC. Mr. Wang also stated that OPPO has plans to release their first 5G-enabled smartphone by the first half of 2019. The exact model wasn’t disclosed, but the device will most likely be a part of the OPPO Find lineup. Lastly, Mr. Wang also revealed OPPO’s plans to produce a smartphone with a circular camera cutout on the screen by 2020. Although, OPPO wouldn’t be the first to the market with such a device as Huawei plans to release a smartphone with a display hole within the next few weeks, while Samsung allegedly plans a release for January of 2019.

OPPO has been at the forefront of innovative smartphones technologies with motorized sliders, SuperVOOC charging, and more. We are definitely interested in their take on the future of the smartphone. Heavy competition will eventually lower the prices of these products so that we don’t have to pay $1,700 for bleeding edge technology.