Nah. The worst possible thing they could be is the second worst thing.
The worst thing to happen to smarohones was when Androids stopped coming with slide-out physical keyboards.
Fuck Apple for many reasons, but the onscreen keyboard is the most egregious and unforgivable of those reasons.
It was ok until predictive text and swiping went completely to sit (for example).
Just use an usb-c keyboard, you can use a much bigger one than would ever fit in a phone. Those tiny ones where a thumb covers 5 keys at a time weren’t that great, SwiftKey is much faster
Great, another thing to carry in my pocket
Still literally zero good reason for them to exist
How do you even make a protective case for these? Seems like it’s too easy to drop it and crack the screen
The back of the phone is completely covered aside from the camera lenses, the ‘front’ has a raised edge around the perimeter of the screen, and when they open to reveal the ‘inside’ both of those parts end up in your hand so you don’t notice them. So basically a regular phone case that can fold. I’ve been using one for over a year, dropping it constantly cause I’m a natural butterfingers, and even though the case DID break (see below), it broke before the screen did. The screen has a tiny, almost imperseptible fracture and I’m not even sure when I got it but it hasn’t affected a single thing. I should point out that when I got it, the only case available at the Verizon store was pretty mid and I’ve just been too lazy to get a good case.
In short, just look up some (good) screens and you’ll see that it’s pretty intuitive. As for the screen strength, I’ll admit I had the same worry as you but this is honestly the strongest phone I’ve probably ever had. 10/10 would recommend if interested
AI is the worst thing to happen to smartphones.
Bootloader unlocking being removed more is the worst thing to happen to smartphones
OK, I’ll agree to second place for AI then. That puts folding phones into third place at worst.
True. Folding phones are stupid, almost noone will buy them and they will eventually stop producing them.
But not so for LLMS, they don’t function through basic market mechanisms, since they exist through the AI circlejerk bubble. They will keep pushing LLMs, incorporating it into more and more until the entire UI of the phone is just one LLM which you have to interact with to make it do anything.
The worst thing to happen was the boring black rectangle format winning and all other designs disappearing. You don’t have to buy a foldable if you don’t want to. It’s next to impossible to buy anything that’s doesn’t look like every other phone on the market.
You can buy a modern reasonably powerful flipphone that runs android, there just aren’t enough people interested in something that isn’t the brick because the brick is, for most people, the optimal form factor for a phone.
The worst thing to happen was the huge 6’ screen. I just want a small phone with doesn’t rip my jean’s pockets and easy to handle with one hand.
Your 6’ phone would look enormous next to an 18" replica of stonehenge
Aren’t there plenty of those? They’re just not flagship models.
I invite you to actually check, there’s actually nothing modern below 6 inches, except those gimmicky 3" screen phones you can find on temu and such
Sadly no. unless it’s some nameless knockoff brand.
I miss full slide-out qwerty keyboards.
I loves those. No waterproofing though. That’s how my last one got deatroyed
That was the peak of pre-iPhone cell phone tech imo
Same 😢 I’ve been looking around for one for years but there’s nothing that can run deGoogled android.
No slide out, but unihertz and clicks are both making a BlackBerry style form factor with android and physical keyboard :)
(Clicks one is called the clicks communicator. Figured I’d mention since that might be helpful to know if anyone wanted to look it up)
I’m familiar with both. I think it’s possible to run LineageOS on some unihertz but the support is not solid enough for me to risk it. Clicks is fairly new, I think they open source some stuff but it’s not supported by anything deGoogled yet.
A folding phone isnt inherently unrepairable. Yes it is less durable but if you look some of them the only drawback is that the internal screen scratches easily and are otherwise very stable. Would i get a folding phone to use as a phone? No, but as a mini tablet it is extremely neat. And once again, as all devices, you can make them repairable. But yes they are more expensive but you know you dont have to buy them right? You know you could just buy a fairphone, put linux on it and use that for like 8 years or what the support is?
It’s complete bollocks though, isn’t it?
I’ve had more or less every-other generation of Samsung foldables since the first one - all are still going fine with the exception of the very first (when I buy a new phone, I give the old one to friends or family.)
One of them even got dunked in wet concrete (unfortunately while in my pocket, also dunked head to toe in wet concrete, but that’s a long story.) After hosing it down and drying, it was fine.
It’s fine not to like foldables because you don’t actually want what they offer - but the technology is fine.
That’s anecdotal, the manufacturers themselves admit that the hardware is statistically less durable than brick phones and there’s plenty of 3rd party data to support it.
Less durable is not the same as fragile. All smartphones today are way more durable than any smartphone from 10 years ago.
It’s a tradeoff of a little less durability for a bigger screen when you want one.
Maybe from 10 years ago, but not twenty!
If there’s plenty of 3rd party data to support it - link some then. Because I can’t find it.
(Bullshit Youtube videos don’t count.)
The only data I could find more reputable than “Reddit sed” was Which, but since they contradict you I doubt that’s in your “plenty of 3rd party data”.
I mean, here’s one from a manufacturer themselves admitting brick phones are more durable.
https://www.honor.com/my/blog/common-durability-issues-in-foldable-phones/
Honor. Who even the fuck are Honor?
Cheap shit phones are shit. News at 11.
Honor is one of the largest foldable phone manufacturers worldwide, and they have something like 5-10% of the global smartphone market. You not knowing they exist is just you being ignorant of the global market 🙄
It’s me not buying cheap shit, is what it is. But as ever, I can’t find a single source to back your assertion up - every source I found puts them in “others”, below Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei, Vivo and Oppo.
You’ll forgive me if I don’t take “China’s 5th biggest mobile manufacturer” as the One Source of Truth.
Anyway, what is this deeply weird thing of yours? Do you want to show us all on the doll where the foldable phone touched you or something?
Sure buddy. I provided sources and info. You decided ‘anything on YouTube is crap’, ‘major manufacturer doesn’t count’, and are now resorting to ad hominems. There’s no winning when the goalposts keep moving, and you’re obviously not interested in civil discussions. Ciao.
These are absolutely a gimmick. A fun gimmick for sure, but not worth the prices for flagship phones these days, especially when cheaper non-folding phones are more durable
I wouldn’t say it’s a gimmick, but I agree with being too expensive for what it is.
I do a lot of reading (books, articles, manga, etc) and I love the idea of regardless of where I am, I can double the size of my screen and get some reading done.
Also, Bloons td 6, I think this game benefits from a bigger screen.
Alas, I already have an e-ink tablet and my phone is too recent, so I could never justify buying one of these. But maybe someday
I’ve sunk many hours of playing the OG Rollercoaster Tycoon and OpenTTD on my foldable screen; perfectly optimized. I don’t think I would have even 5% of that time on a rectangular phone
Had folding phones had a good stylus support, they would have been an absolutely amazing piece of tech. I remember only 2 Samsung phones had it, and then it got discontinued. What a bummer.
The fold series still supports stylus
The latest fold doesn’t. I double checked it, fold is now too thin to have S pen inside the body. And it likely isn’t going to be supported in future generations either.
They’ve never integrated the pen with the body afaik, wife and I had the 2/3/4/5,generally we just got a case with the Spen holder.
Still though they function on the inner screen is my point, it is supported functionally.
The outer screen tho doesn’t work with the pen.
Personally I went to a Pixel when I started having hinge issues on my 4, have become increasingly anti-Google so got graphene and homelabbed up.
Not on fold 7 & 8. The stylus doesn’t work on either display.
Damn no shit, what a weird step back for no reason.
My wife loves her foldable phone. Why when first one broke I got her another one.
Guess who’s laughing all the way to the bank
Hint: it sure as fuck ain’t me.
Or you!no one was laughing, not even the crickets
Two bricks held together with a hinge is weaker than just a brick… Who would have thought…
True, but if both bricks and the hinge are made of tungsten, it’s not going to matter that much anyway if you’re just dropping it onto a wood floor. Like, what you said isn’t wrong, but you’re insinuating that the creators weren’t aware of that fact when they made the thing
From the article:
“I recently posted my take about this on Mastodon and I accidentally rage-baited one of my good friends who daily-drives a folding phone. So he messaged me on Signal passionately defending it. He finds it useful as a phone + iPad Mini replacement, especially since he bought his used for $400”
Therein lies the issue. The future that Apple, Google, et al sees is one where we move towards device convergence. There was a brief period where it wasn’t uncommon for a person to have a phone, tablet, laptop or desktop, etc. if you go back a bit more there were even more devices (iPods, cd players, etc). but the modern context has shown that phones can do a LOT of compute. An iphone 16 pro max from 2 years ago can perform around the level of a GeForce 1050, an aging but still somewhat viable card, except where that takes around 75 watts the iphone gpu takes 6-7 (lol). The iphone 18 pro max is closer to a 1060, which is about double the compute power. And then you have stuff like the m5 ipad which is a bit more powerful.
They’re not top end machine equivalents but they don’t have to be. 80-90% of users (possibly more) don’t do anything that requires such compute power. This has been reflected in consumer spending for years now. Smartphone and laptop sales are still growing, albeit at a slower rate, whereas desktop and laptop sales continue to fall. The future is people using smartphones for everything, tablets for power users, and laptops/desktops for the extreme high end power users. This sucks because it’s an ergonomic nightmare to do everything on your phone, the walled garden approach of all major phones will greatly hasten everything being locked down, mobile browsers are trash and even though the majority of traffic comes through them web designers still ignore making sites work on mobile browsers, etc
Of course the anti corporatist narrative fits in well here: these companies are excited for this convergence because it shifts control away from the user. The pc by nature is an open platform and has to have some degree of openness to work with multiple hardware configurations and peripherals. The phone is consistent hardware (extremely so in apples case) and the precedent has long been set for locked down everything. at the same time the consumer eats this shit up despite tons of people yelling about it so maybe we deserve it. But convergence makes sense from a consumer perspective too; we can’t afford to buy a laptop, phone, and tablet.
I don’t get it. If a larger screen is so important to you, why not just use a tablet? They have tablets that are almost that small. It just seems like it’s not big enough to help with much that a tablet won’t do better. I know it’s an extra device, but I doubt most people REALLY need the extra screen space that badly, and if they REALLY do, a tablet would serve that need much better.
1-Watching videos are always a little bigger. Most videos made nowadays are in 16:9 so it isn’t THAT much of a difference honestly, but if I’m watching something in the old 4:3 format I can zoom in so it fills the entire screen (basically two ‘normal’ phones stacked on top of each other. Also, even in the former case, the subtitles usually appear BELOW the screen instead of blocking something from the actual show
2-Gaming. More or less the same as the above but some games are specifically programmed for the larger screens and they are a GODSEND for when I’m trying to play strategy games. I’m going to lump “typing” in here as well just because I feel way less fat-fingered typing with the full screen; functionally it’s not all that different than the norm but it certainly feels a lot more natural this way, at least for me (though admitedly, the split in the middle of the keyboard took a little bit to get used to, see below)
3-Depending on the apps/browsers/whatever, I can have 2 windows open on the same screen. Very helpful for when, for example, a friend texts me a question on one side and I’m like 90% sure I know the answer but just to be safe I do a Google search with the other side. This one is admitedly niche but sure comes in handy when I want it.
4-Probably the biggest reason is simply “I want a tablet that can fit in my pocket.” I don’t always use it in tablet form, sometimes the phone is all I need at the moment and then it goes right back into my pocket. But then when I WANT the tablet, I don’t need to go fetch it from another part of the house, or bemoan the fact that I left it at home, or whatever; I guess “having the different options available” is probably the best way to put it. This even applies to when I’m trying to balance or prop it up somewhere; if one configuration doesn’t work for whatever reason, the other probably will.
TL;DR Having options is nice. Do I NEEEEEED my videos/games to be bigger or a tablet that I can fit in my pocket? No, but after having that power in my fingertips (literally) I’m probably not going back anytime soon
I really loved the new razr I had for the last two years. Hella fun to play with…but everyone’s right. It’s a fragile gimmick going after your nostalgia. Folding screens like this just aren’t ready for the abuse we put on them.
I bought a 2023 Razr not long after its successor came out. The phone was only $550 because I wasn’t buying a current flagship (it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s foldable, flagship phones have gotten obnoxiously expensive), and so far it’s held up just fine. There’s creases in the protective layer over the screen where it bends the most, but it’s not anything that really hinders my user experience.
The fact that it actually fits in my back pocket without destroying the fabric is a huge plus for me.
I really like the idea of a tri-fold phone running Nura that can revert to a tablet or desktop. It’s one device for multiple form factors, for different use cases.
This writer clearly hasn’t been to China where we have had generations of foldables. The last two gens are amazing from all manufacturers. The latest Xiaomi 18 fold sold out in one day. Just the usual ignorant western point of view.
The reality is that Xiaomi fold 18 is doing the same as the very first folding phone. Meaning you have over-tempered glass that scratches from a fart & you have the mandatory plastic screen protector that is guaranteed to peel off within 3 years on a foldable. There are no material science breakthroughs here, they are just a bit ahead in hinge engineering & such.
Sure maybe people that are good at babying them or are very lucky can keep them in a working condition for a couple of years, but the concept itself is not great. At least i’m not a fan of plastic touch surfaces nor thick phones. I acknowledge that they are probably quite good for women who want to fit a full-size tablet in their ever so tiny tote bag, but that’s it.
You say that like the western market hasn’t had generations of foldables out as well…
I thought people love paying for things that break easily.
/s for those who think at the speed of sloth
