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If foldable phones catch on, you can thank an unlikely source

When it comes to creating latest technology phone that take new shapes, little-known handset maker ZTE wants to lead the charge.

With foldable displays are either a waste of time or the next breakthrough in handsets.

YES It just the latest technology .

You can count Lixin Cheng, head of mobile business, as someone solidly in the pro-foldable camp. Last year, ZTE released the , a clamshell-like phone that has two screens and can be opened up to create a single larger display. It includes a hinge and doesn't have a true foldable display, but Cheng believes the design will inspire a new wave of phones.

zte-axon-m-gif-dual-screen-phone
This latest technology 'Axon M' has a unique two-screen design that flips out to form a larger display.

"I'm confident we'll be leading this way for some time to come," Cheng said last week in Las Vegas, where the trade show was taking place. "We're committed to this category."

It's one thing if ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications equipment maker best known in the US for selling budget phones, talks about a new design scheme. But consumer electronics heavy hitter lent this idea some weight in September when its mobile chief, DJ Koh, said he. has weighed in on atypical screens, too, with a .

Let's face it: Phones could use a radical shake-up. They're all essentially the same plastic or metal slab with a glass display -- a design popularized by and with the original , which debuted 11 years ago. Last year saw the proliferation of "borderless displays," which pack more screen into a smaller body, as seen in the , and .

We're already over it.

This latest technology is a foldable display that can expand or contract based on your needs has a chance to really get us excited about mobile devices again. It would mark a significant jump in innovation and design for smartphones, which generally see only incremental updates each year.

Forget wearables, how about foldables?
Samsung has teased bendable screens for years. Can it make good on its goal to release a foldable phone?

But there are a ton of technical and practical hurdles. And while early adopters and gadget enthusiasts might salivate over the prospects of displays that bend and fold, mainstream consumers could shy away from such a big deviation from the norm. After all, utilizing other or the squat keyboard design of the , received cool receptions. Kyocera actually had a fold-out phone, called . It received scathing reviews.

"Someday foldable will be great, but today it's just gimmicky," said Maribel Lopez, an analyst at Lopez Research.

What do the other big players in the industry say? I got a chance to talk to some of them at CES last week.

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Cautious interest
, one of the world's largest consumer electronics makers and perennial crosstown rival to Samsung, wouldn't comment on whether it was building a foldable phone, but President and Chief Technology Officer Il-pyung Park called it an "interesting feature."

"Any latest technology and innovation that makes sense we will consider in our future products," he said in an interview at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.


Like Samsung, LG has a separate business that focuses on building displays, and at CES it showed off a. It's not a huge stretch to imagine that the company is considering smaller-scale devices like phones.

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