New Royole Phone

Samsung may be just days away from taking the wraps

off its very own foldable smartphone-tablet hybrid, but

consumer electronics company Royole has stolen a bit

of its thunder with its very own flexible display device.

Called the FlexPai, the 7.8-inch hybrid device can fold

180 degrees and transform from a tablet into a phone,

albeit a bulky one.

At an event in San Francisco this evening, Royole brought

out a working version of the FlexPai that we actually got to

hold, and the folding feature works as advertised. Granted,

it feels miles away in quality from a high-end modern flagship,

but it is still the first real foldable device I’ve seen in person,

and not just in a concept video or prototype stage.

The FlexPai will be available as a consumer device in China

with a base model price of 8,999 yuan, or around $1,300. You

can also pay that amount of money in USD for a developer

version if you live in North America. That gets you 128GB of

storage, but you can double it for an additional $150 and add

an additional 2GB of RAM for a total of 8GB.