After Huawei and Samsung, ZTE is also throwing its hat in the foldable smartphone ring. The company recently patented a folding phone with a clamshell vertical design. Once you fold it, a small part of the screen will remain usable at the bottom.
ZTE was actually a pioneer of foldable, as they unveiled the Axon M back in October 2017. Back then it flopped because the world wasn’t ready for such a format, but maybe now is the time for it. The renders made by Letsgodigital show us a device that’s rather long vertically and it bends down the middle. It’s not very far from the rumored Moto RAZR 2019 model, to be honest.
This clamshell seems to have a metal case unless my eyes are mistaking me. ZTE filed the design patent for this screen in April last year, over at the World Intellectual Property Office. It was only on March 5th, 2019 that it got published. Interestingly, this ZTE device has two back cameras on the bulkier part of the body and two other cameras at the top side of the slimmer folding part.
TCL was also making a phone like this at some point. ZTE already launched a 5G phone already, so it will be a formality to get that feature here. The company isn’t doing great right now, between the $900 million fine last year in the USA and the lack of a real groundbreaking product.
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