The most notable feature about Royole’s third-generation Cicada Wing FFD (Fully Flexible Display) on this device is perhaps its much improved bend radius, going from the previous version’s 3mm down to just 1mm, while still lasting over 200,000 bends. This gives the phone a much better fold — perhaps much closer to, if not better than, Huawei’s Mate Xs which has a similar outward-facing flexible screen.

The panel also benefits from a boost in brightness, contrast, color gamut and viewing angle, all of which are further enhanced by a new custom driver chip. For the display nerds out there, at a 30-degree viewing angle, this panel is apparently rated with a JNCD (Just Noticeable Color Difference) below 0.6, along with 1.5-times better brightness decay.

Much like its predecessor, the FlexPai 2 has a 7.8-inch screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio when fully open. Unsurprisingly, this latest flagship is powered by Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon 865, which comes with 5G radio, faster LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.0 storage. There’s also a set of quad cameras along with stereo speakers, which is what you’d expect on a flagship phone these days. Royole stopped short at providing further information, but with a Q2 2020 launch date set for the consumer market, we’ll be hearing more soon.

Chances are the FlexPai 2 won’t be the only device to leverage the third-generation Cicada Wing FFD. In the same online event, Royole announced that it has entered a strategic partnership with ZTE to explore more use cases with the former’s flexible display technology. Of course, ZTE is no stranger to the foldable phone form factor — you may recall the dual-screen Axon M from 2017, though it was a little ahead of its time.

More importantly, such partnership means Royole has finally reached the stage where it’s ready to work with phone brands, which could lead to a wider variety of flexible phones in the near future. That said, only time will tell whether Royole has the production capability to handle other manufacturer requests, let alone its own phones.

Samsung’s foldable display tech won’t just be limited to book-like phones akin to the Galaxy Fold. The company used its annual Developer Conference to preview a vertically folding, clamshell-style form factor. The company only said it was “exploring” the concept as part of its overall work on foldable devices, but it clearly put some thought into the technology. A short demo showed a user recording video in full screen at one moment, and creating a split view with more extensive controls when folding the phone 90 degrees. This might be ideal for recording your hands-free TikTok clips — you’d have a built-in stand.

Notably, the patent comes from Microsoft’s technology licensing team. That suggests this isn’t necessarily reserved for a specific device, or even Microsoft devices in general. Instead, Microsoft might license the technology to other hardware makers as foldable screens become more practical.

You’re unlikely see a foldable Surface tablet at Microsoft’s October 2nd event, if you see one at all. While one rumor hinted that the company was relatively far into development of Centaurus, a large dual-screen PC running a stripped-down Windows Lite, that doesn’t mean it will have a folding display. Consider this more a glimpse of what future Windows-powered foldables could look like.

The findings might help explain at least one of the review unit failures. The Verge‘s Dieter Bohn noted that his Galaxy Fold developed a bulge that ultimately broke a conspicuous number of pixels. If debris was at fault, that wouldn’t bode well for everyday users whose phones might break relatively easily. This also isn’t including the inherent fragility of a plastic display, which is more prone to nicks and scratches than glass.

It’s not completely surprising that the Fold would be vulnerable when it’s not rated for dust or water resistance. Still, this latest teardown isn’t confidence-inspiring. If iFixit is on the mark, Samsung may need to make significant design changes for the device to stand up to real-world use.