San Francisco, USA - Nov 5, 2018 (CGTN - No access Chinese mainland)
1. Screen reading (English) "2018 VIP Press Event"; Founder, CEO of Royole Corp Bill Liu speaking
2. Foldable phones on display
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Bill Liu, founder, CEO, Royole Corp (partially overlaid with shot 4):
"You can actually turn it around, so you can tell you are using the other side. So this is the second phone. We're using dual SIM cards here. So there's basically two smart phones together in this FlexPai and a tablet together."
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4. Attendees
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5. Various of foldable phones on display
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Bill Liu, founder, CEO, Royole Corp:
"The flexible displays, flexible sensors are very, very difficult to make it happen. This is totally bendable, flexible and has to be durable, too, reliable. Because if you can only bend it like ten times, it's not a product. You have to make the device sustainable for at least probably 100,000 times repeated bending."
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Christian de Looper, mobile tech reporter, Digital Trends:
"Yeah, I think it's all about apps, if they can get Google Play on there, if they can get all the Android apps to work properly even if they are not specifically developed for the phone."
8. Sign reading "$30,000,000.00, FlexPai Developer Support Project"
9. Foldable phone on display
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Bill Liu, founder, CEO, Royole Corp (partially overlaid with shot 11):
"In the business world, a lot of things happen because of the right timing. There are so many opportunities ahead. We'll see what will happen. I mean this is just the start."
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11. Foldable phone on display
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12. Reporter taking photo
13. Man bending foldable phone

Royole Corp, a little-known Chinese tech company, has already beat Samsung to the foldable smartphone punch.

Based in Shenzhen and Silicon Valley, the startup recently became the first to unveil a commercially available foldable phone called FlexPai.

"You can actually turn it around, so you can tell you are using the other side. So this is the second phone. We're using dual SIM cards here. So there's basically two smart phones together in this FlexPai and a tablet together," said Bill Liu, founder and CEO of Royole Corp.

The FlexPai is also billed as being durable and unbreakable.

"The flexible displays, flexible sensors are very, very difficult to make it happen. This is totally bendable, flexible and has to be durable, too, reliable. Because if you can only bend it like ten times, it's not a product. You have to make the device sustainable for at least probably 100,000 times repeated bending," said Liu.

The screen is made from plastic. And because it has three different screens, it runs its own operating system called Water, which is based on the Android operating system.

"Yeah, I think it's all about apps, if they can get Google Play on there, if they can get all the Android apps to work properly even if they are not specifically developed for the phone," said Christian de Looper, a mobile tech reporter at Digital Trends.

Royole plans to shell out 30 million U.S. dollars in grants to help developers create apps for FlexPai's operating system. Even with other tech giants like Apple, LG and Huawei all believed to be working on foldable phones, too, Royole says it's not worried about the competition.

"In the business world, a lot of things happen because of the right timing. There are so many opportunities ahead. We'll see what will happen. I mean this is just the start," said Liu.

Samsung gave no details on price, while FlexPai's base model is around 1,300 U.S. dollars with shipments expected to begin by the end of the year.