Chinese smartphone firm Oppo has unveiled its new flagship folding phone Thursday, touting a slimmer body and artificial intelligence-focused features in a bid to compete with high-end foldable devices from the likes of Samsung and Huawei.

CNBC reports that the company’s Find N5 phone that can fold in half, will retail at a starting price of 2,499 Singapore dollars ($1,867.70).

When it’s folded shut, the Find N5 looks like a normal bar-shaped phone with a 6.62-inch display.

The device can then be folded outward to show a larger, 8.12-inch tablet. Most notably, the phone has an ultra-thin design.

When closed, it measures 8.93 millimeters thick, while when opened out in tablet form, the Find N5 has a depth of 4.21 millimeters.

That’s slimmer than Samsung’s Galaxy Fold 6, which the South Korean tech giant released last year. Inside the device is a razer-thin 5,600 milliampere-hour (mAh) battery that’s no bigger than a credit card.

Oppo said the battery incorporates a silicon-carbon material, which enables high battery capacity despite its small size.

Oppo is hoping it can win business from the likes of Samsung and Chinese tech giant Huawei, both major smartphone players seeking to shake the market out of an innovation slowdown with flashy new models that can bend.

Earlier this week, Huawei launched the Mate XT, a “trifold” phone with three screens, outside of China for the first time.

The Central Bank of Nigeria Monetary Policy Committee has retained the country’s interest rate at 27.50 percent in January, the same rate as in November last year amid inflation drops.

It also retained the Cash Reserve Ratio, CRR at 50 basis points and the liquidity ratio, LR, at 30 percent and the asymmetric corridor at +500/-100 basis points around the MPR; other monetary policy decisions were retained.

CBN Governor, Olayemi Cardoso disclosed this in a press briefing on Thursday after 299th MPC in Abuja.

The apex bank boss explained that the rate pause was necessary following the recent inflation decline, which dropped to 24.48 percent in January after the Consumer Price Index rebase.

“The members of the MPC unanimously agreed to retain the interest rate at 27.50 percent” he stated.

The first pause in interest rate hikes since Cardoso took office in September 2023.

This comes as economists and financial experts have, in the last months, called for an interest rate pause.

The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise has been championing a call for a pause in the nation’s interest rate hike.

Recall that on Tuesday, National Bureau of Statistics announced that Nigeria’s headline and food inflation rate dropped to 24.48 percent and 26.08 percent in January from 34.80 percent and 39.93 percent in December last year.

The CBN Governor, Olayemi Cardoso says that the monies in dormant accounts and unclaimed balances with banks for at least 10 years will be warehoused in a dedicated account known as the Unclaimed Balances Trust Fund Pool Account (UBTF).

According to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, the number of dormant bank accounts in Nigeria is over 19.69 million, with an estimated over N850 billion deposits.

According to the NIBSS data, dormant accounts remained above 19 million every month since February 2024, with December closing at 19,697,125 inactive accounts.

This represents an increase of 1,205,000 from January’s figure of 18,492,169, marking a 6.51 percent rise over the year.

The peak was recorded in May and June when the number reached 20.57 million before dropping slightly in the second half of the year.

The data further shows that there was an increase of 2.08 million dormant accounts between the first six months of 2024 before the CBN’s July directive on such accounts.

The apex bank explains that the funds from dormant accounts, and unclaimed balances may be invested in Nigerian Treasury Bills and other government securities.

The CBN, in its new guidelines, which is a review of the guidelines issued in October 2015, exempted dormant accounts and unclaimed balances under litigation and investigation.

The guideline reads, “CBN shall treat unclaimed balances (dormant accounts and financial assets) as follows:

“Open and maintain the ‘UBTF Pool Account’, maintain records of the beneficiaries of the unclaimed balances warehoused in the UBTF Pool Account.

“Invest the funds in Nigerian treasury bills (NTBs) and other securities as may be approved by the ‘Unclaimed Balances Management Committee.

“Refund the principal and interest (if any) on the invested funds to the beneficiaries not later than 10 working days from the date of receipt of the request and where it is imperative to extend the timeline, a notice of extension shall be communicated to the requesting FI stating reasons for the extension.”

Justifying this move, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Olayemi Cardoso, said that monies in dormant accounts in banks are susceptible to fraud.

At the end of the 296th meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee in Abuja, Cardoso said,

“Concerning dormant accounts, what I found personally is if you leave accounts dormant in banks, sometimes more than when you don’t leave them dormant in banks. In fact, most times, they are more susceptible to fraudsters copying your identity and trying to gain hold of the system to grab your money. So, that is a problem I think most money banks face.”

“The policy and the directive are meant to ensure that all those monies come to the central bank for safekeeping and it is at zero cost to the beneficiaries.

All that will happen is that the central bank will manage the money within our possession and when the rightful owner surfaces, the money is returned plus whatever income is accrued to you.”