Foldable phones are redefining how we interact with our smartphones

Foldable phone shipments are likely to cross 1 million next year, and their share of the premium smartphones could touch 35 per cent by 2025

In February 2008, the Netherlands-based Polymer Vision, a Philips subsidiary, announced the Readius. It was rollable and had a flexible e-ink display. Part portable media device, part e-reader, it ran into rough weather with the cheaper alternatives, such as Amazon’s Kindle DX.

In 2009, Polymer Vision went bankrupt.

Its failure kept the canvas blank for four years until Samsung, in 2013, picked up the foldable gauntlet. The South Korean giant, during its Consumer Electronics Show that year, presented several concepts of smartphones with flexible displays under the codename, Youm. Down the road, there were other attempts to break open the market, such