Royole, known for making the world’s first foldable smartphone, does not seem to be in the best financial condition. The company has defaulted on its employee wages for a year. The leading innovative company in China, whose primary business is focused on flexible display technology, has been in crisis for over a year.

As per China’s News Daily, around 50 Royole employees resorted to protest demonstrations with banners and slogans at the company’s Display Headquarters entrance in Shenzhen. After not adhering to the verbal promises made by Liu Zihong, Royole’s CEO, the employees had no option but to protest against the company. The employees have not received their areas and wages since November 2022 and are now demanding to resolve the issue and credit their wages as soon as possible.

The Employee Rights Protection Committee signed an application for the settlement of the remaining claims by Shenzhen Royole Technology Co., Ltd. as a demand. The Royole workers have not received the wage for the past 8 months, while the employees haven’t seen it for the past 12 months. Due to the ongoing financial crisis, thousands of company employees have already left the company over the past couple of years.

In response, the company said the business has significantly suffered losses and is only able to pay social security deposits. Only 200–300 employees are now left with the company, consisting of engineers who maintain the production line.

Royole’s move to seek help from the government and investors went in vain, as employees are saying the production line never started in 2022. However, the government is helping the company to restructure its debt, but there has been no significant change.

Royole’s Past Glory

The company’s last smartphone launched was the Royole FlexPai 2 in 2020, with up to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Even though the company’s maiden smartphone, Royole FlexPai, was sold out within a few minutes after going on sale in 2019,. In the last decade, it has been considered a primary competitor to Samsung Display’s monopoly as it has developed ultra-low-temperature non-silicon process integration technology to create flexible displays.

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Foldable smartphones have been a trend since early 2019. Although many accredited Samsung for making the innovative step, it was actually Royole that was the first to launch a foldable smartphone. And now, the company has just unveiled the Flexpai 2, the successor to the first smartphone with a flexible display.

Royole Flexpai 2 features the 3rd generation Cicada wing, which is basically a fancier term for the company’s flexible display panel. The latest iteration features various improvements over its predecessor and now has a smaller crease and bend radius. This also allows for an increase in brightness, contrast and offers a better viewing angle.

Under the hood, Royole Flexpai 2 houses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 SoC alongside the X55 5G modem. Its display is a 7.8 inch screen with a 4:3 ration when fully opened. It also features the latest LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.0 storage as well. Unfortunately, details regarding its battery capacity are still unknown, but that is to be expected since there is still time for the device officially launches.

In the conference, Royole officials showcased the display, which was the highlighting part of the event. The improvements in technology was boasted, rightly so, and the panel has reportedly withstood 200,000+ bends without sustaining any damage. This new flexible panel features nearly 100 micro nanomaterials that improve the strain recovery and “layer peeling.” In other words, there are less chances of creases and bubbles forming when the device is unfolded.

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According to Royole, the Flexpai 2’s new Cicada Wing will feature 1.3x better color gamut and 500x the contrast, thanks to its high quality LCD panel. The handset will also feature a unique custom designed display driver that is integrated in the circuit chip. On the other hand, the display panel can be folded in multiple directions and even rolled on its own, showcasing the advancements in the flexible display field.

Royole Flexpai 2 was showcased in an event in China by CEO Bill Liu, who also announced the company’s partnership with another electronics brand, ZTE. This may be indicative of ZTE using Flexpai’s technology, integrating the display in its own foldable smartphone series. However, that is just speculation. Thus, take it with a grain of salt. The Flexpai 2 is expected to launch in Q2 of 2020, so stay tuned.

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(Via)

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Samsung‘s Galaxy Fold isn’t the first foldable smartphone to be unveiled, in case you don’t know. A little known Chinese company known as Royole holds the record as the first company to release a foldable phone dubbed Royole Flexpai. The foldable phone has been on sale in China for a while now but it seems Royole is set to release the device for the global market. How else can we explain the FlexPai popping into the hands of revered YouTuber Zack Nelson of JerryRigEverything.

We already know that foldable phones are very fragile due to the lack of protection on the flexible OLED panel. The YouTuber didn’t spare the FlexPai as he takes the device through the complete dose of scratch, burn and bend tests.

We don’t expect the flexible phone to survive such extreme conditions. The scratch test only survives till level 3 when scratch started appearing visibly on the screen. The flame test sees the OLED getting burnt out at the spot where the flame hits.

The bend test sees the tester flipping the device open and close severally without any effect. Trouble actually started when he decided to turn it the wrong way. The hinge was damaged and with some more bend, the flexible screen got damaged.

Overall, te FlexPai may not have withstood the extreme conditions like the regular flagships, but the response is impressive. However, with the littleflaws lke the lack of protection for theflexiblescreen, we won’t if it won’t be a big risk to pay $1300 and get absolutely no protection from keys in your pocket and stuff.  Here’s the video by JerryRigEverything.

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Many of us would be wondering how Royole FlexPai is the first foldable smartphone instead of Galaxy Fold? A few months before Samsung, Royole announced its foldable smartphone and the company put it on pre-sale in December. The company today made it available for sale and it has been sold out in a very short period of time.

Royole FlexPai is available in three variants of 6GB + 128GB, 8GB + 256GB, and 8GB + 512GB costing 8999 Yuan ($1337), 9998 Yuan ($1486) and 12999 Yuan ($1932) respectively.

It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC with Adreno 640 GPU. Moreover, it hosts a 7.8 inch AMOLED HD display with a 1920 x 1440 resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio. There’s a 16 MP + 20 MP dual camera setup with the rear  f/1.8 aperture size and Optical Image Stabilization (OIS). To quickly charge its 3,800 mAh battery, it supports 5V/5A Ro-fast charging technology. It can charge the device from 0% to 80% within an hour.

For connectivity, it comes with a dual SIM (nano only), storage expansion (256GB max), Bluetooth 5.1, GPS, and Wi-Fi. The FlexPai weighs 320g and measures 134 x 190.35 x 7.6 mm.

• Read More: FlexPai, World’s First Foldable Smartphone, Will be the First to Ship With Snapdragon 855

Interested users can purchase the device from China’s Tmall in next round of sale on May 9 at 10 am (Beijing Time). In the coming weeks, Flexpai will have to compete with Huawei Mate X scheduled for launch in June, and Galaxy Fold which is already in the market.

(via)

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An interesting drama is currently playing out between two of China’s innovative companies, Royole Technology and Xiaomi. A couple of months back, Royole Technology was an unknown company but it blasted into the scene with the unveiling of the first true foldable phone dubbed Royole Flexpai. The company even recently showcased the smartphone at CES 2019. While the company is yet to disclose when the Flexpai will become available, its achievement is about getting overshadowed by Xiaomi’s foldable phone that was outed recently. Even though there are reports that the phone is still a long way from going commercial, the company effectively took the shine off Royole’s Flexpai.

That has apparently not gone down well with Royole as the company’s president recently took a swipe at Xiaomi’s own foldable model. The post didn’t directly mention Xiaomi but the content leaves no one in doubt that Xiaomi was being referred to. The company CEO shared a post by his VP which talked about the patented technology which the company has and how some companies are in the process of imitating its innovation. Obviously, Royole is aware that if Xiaomi goes head to head with it by launching a commercial model at the same time, it won’t survive the competition. The post apparently downplays Xiaomi’s ability to commercialize the concept foldable phone which it believes uses materials that may not be durable. 

Read Also: Xiaomi’s foldable smartphone still has several hurdles to cross before commercial availability

Xiaomi was quick to respond, that the Xiaomi double folding mobile phone is an innovative product independently developed by Xiaomi. The company went on to state that the flexible folding screen of this phone is the result of joint development by Xiaomi and supply chain partners. The company was also irked by headlines touting Xiaomi to have unveiled the world’s first foldable phone. However, that was clarified in the official response that the double folding design is the first in the industry.

(source 1, 2)

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The foldable smartphone that has long been anticipated was finally released but with some bit of surprise. We had expected either Samsung or LG or even Huawei to be the first to release a model. The Microsoft Surface tablet was also tipped to be among the early birds but that wasn’t the case. Instead, a relatively unknown Chinese OEM named Royole Technology became the first company to launch a true foldable phone – the Royole Flexpai.

The device was announced in a ceremony in China a few days ago and just yesterday more details of the specifications were revealed. A hands-on video of the Flexpai foldable phone has now appeared online, giving us a clear view of the device. The video also shows the device in action both in the tablet mode and when folded. However, we must point out that the design looks quite rough, and may still receive some fine tuning before the final release. There is no doubt that this is still a concept that may take a while before going commercial. For one, Qualcomm is yet to officially announce the Snapdragon 8150 chipset and that may not find is way into smartphones until next year. However, it is an impressive design that we hope will speed up the release of more foldable hones just the same way the Mi Mix gave birth to the full-screen phone design trend.

As a reminder, the  Royole FlexPai sports a 7.8-inch AMOLED screen with a 1920 x 1440 resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio. The device is powered by Qualcomm’s next-gen Snapdragon 800 series processor which is clocked at 2.8GHz while an Adreno 640 GPU powers the graphics.

This is the "world's first foldable screen phone" released by Rouyu Technology, which will use the Snapdragon 8150 processor, but its design is very rough, just to seize the "first", this is a futures product. pic.twitter.com/M0v9o2z0Bw

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) October 31, 2018

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The foldable phone will come in 8GB RAM + 256GB storage, 6GB RAM +128GB storage and 8GB RAM + 512GB storage versions. It also packs a 16MP + 20MP dual camera set up at the rear with a f/1.8 aperture size and optical image stabilization. The device packs a 3,800mAh battery with support for 5V/5A fast charging via their proprietary Ro-Charge technology. It also has support for dual SIM (nano only), storage expansion (256GB max), Bluetooth 5.1, GPS, and Wi-Fi. Supported LTE bands are 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 12, 34, 38, 39, 40, and 41. There is a USB-C port for charging and audio. There’s no word yet on its release.

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