China’s Royole has released a futuristic smartphone that can fold up.

The FlexPai is billed as the world’s first foldable smartphone and has a super flexible screen which can be bent from the middle.

With a thickness of just 7.6mm, the dual-camera handset is now available for pre-order online.

When the phone’s 7.8-inch screen is fully bent back from both sides, it provides three display screens for the user. In addition to the front and back displays, the spine will become a third albeit small screen showing incoming calls, messages or emails when they are received.

The phone’s price ranges from 8,999 yuan (US$1,294) to 12,999 yuan in China for either a consumer model or a developer model. However, only the developer model has been released outside of China at US$1,557 for a 128G edition and US$1,738 for a 256G edition.

The phone has two cameras at the top.

Bill Liu, the 35-year-old founder and CEO of Royole, has given the screen a poetic name, Cicada’s Wings, to highlight its light weight, flexibility and durability.

Liu said the screen contains more than 20 million flexible high-precision* devices, bendy integrated circuits* and nearly 100 micro and nano structured thin film materials. Liu said his team owned more than 2,000 intellectual property* rights.

Wire reported that flexible screens were more resilient* and durable than glass-fronted touchscreen displays. Foldable screens cannot be broken when they are dropped and are also lighter and cheaper.(SD-Agencies)