At this point we have practical real world foldable devices. Maybe it is different for other people but I very rarely encounter them in the real world. I cannot help but feel that the feature is essentially a gimmick:
- The fold out screen is a secondary function. The device is invariably expected to be fully usable in folded state. This means that everything has to be usable without this secondary functionality.
- The fold out screen feature is always going to be more expensive, complex, and more prone to failure than a candy bar device with a single screen
The result is going to be that this will be a luxury or novelty feature without a compelling use case that absolutely requires it, perhaps similar to convertible touch screen laptops that can be used as an etsatz tablet.
Every time I look at the demo devices in a shop like media market or Saturn selling foldables, the screens of most devices are damaged. There are always cracks, discolorations or some kind of screen damage to these devices. If brand new demo pieces can’t last a few weeks, why would I bother to buy one, knowing it won’t last the usual 3 years of smartphone use?
The tech for having screens that aren’t just flat squares is cool, opening up more possibilities for wrist wear, vr etc, but I don’t know anyone that wants this in a phone - seems like a solution in search of a problem.
I think they solve the problem of needing a tablet size to optimally do something and never having it when needed the most.
That’s the problem my Pixel Fold solved for me anyway, I have lots of tablets around my house that never really got used and just collect dust. They never get used because the most optimal time I need them are times I never brought one.
But now I have one on me at all times, a phone when I need a phone and a tablet when I need it the most.
It’s kind of been like switching to a multi monitor setup for the first time, you never think you’d need one or use it all that much till you have one and now you can’t ever go back to a single monitor lmao
Yeah, same for me. I’m actually on my second foldable with a Z Fold 4 and I just love the concept. Mind you, I tend to read quite a few Mangas and books on the go, so this concept is pretty much perfect for me. Combined with my glap controller it also makes for one awesome mobile retro handheld.
I have to admit that it’s not all roses though. My first foldable was a Z Fold 2 and exactly one year after purchase the inner screen suddenly died on me. Started with a few dead pixels and spread out from there, til the whole screen started flickering and was unusable. Samsung refused to acknowledge it under warranty, pointing to a small dent on the hinge where I dropped it shortly after I got it, since Samsung’s official case was terrible.
I vowed to never get another foldable afterwards, but I got back anyway because I just love the form factor. Still, this time I got insurance in case of any other display damage.
Foldables are just an expensive compromise between phones and tablets. For the same amount of money you can buy both, a phone and a tablet, which will last a lot longer.
Budy, all I want is a linux phone without a bunch of proprietary, binary blobs that aren’t supported after 2 years, and a thick, replaceable battery that lasts me 3-5 days on average with daily usage.
With the amount of money they are dumping into these gimmicks, they could instead be significantly changing the market by improving ARM or RISC-V linux and making highly portable computers that fit in your pocket and that you can just plug into a screen where you go. They could merge the mobile gaming market with that of the desktop and console market that way for example. One unified OS with the same APIs and frameworks and whole host of native programming languages.
They could rival laptop manufacturers with their low-power, portable devices. Or even enter the OS market that way by providing a linux distro that they can sell and maintain.
I dunno… just anything but these damn foldables.
You will never get that battery if it makes the device thicker. I was in the industry, we made smartphones with a two day battery. Full on thick, in direct response to customers asking.
None sold. Period. It was something like 8-10mm thicker.
Everyone looked at the one with the thick battery then the thin and bought that.
Motorola makes phones with two day batteries (5000 mAh standard, some going up to 6000 mAh) and their market share is growing, recently reaching third place in the US behind Apple and Samsung. And it’s all in the standard size, forget being 8-10mm thicker, they’re 8-10mm total.
Purism made the Librem 5. It’s a chonker and has bad battery life and they only sold a few thousand units. However, if rappers can make dumb phones and sell out 10k units in a few days, I dare say there’s a market for thick phones with good batteries, it’s just that rappers and celebs do better marketing and have a wider audience.