Smartphone manufacturers still want to make foldables a thing::Foldables are barely 1% of the market, but that’s not stopping anyone but Apple.
I love the foldable idea, but it’s well beyond what I’m willing to pay for the novelty.
Same! I had the LG v60 dual screen case, and loved it. Thats the farthest I’m willing to go, though. It was unwieldy, and almost impossible to use a popsocket with, no way to use a wallet case, et cetera. It’s not worth that price tag for less options just for the occasional use of a bigger screen.
Now, foldable tablet? That’s something I’d be down for (in theory. I am poor.). Closes up small enough for a pocket, folds out when you use it. Only screen on one side, so it can tossed in a bag without worrying about it, because it’s closed up and the screen is protected.
Yeah, the flip phones especially seem like a good form factor if they can make the price go down.
as with all technology though, as they become more accessible with newer models being made and other companies making foldables, the price for the same kind of quality product we have today will inevitably be less in the future.
this is already happening with cpu performance, display quality, etc… it’s finally very affordable to get a 120 hz phone with a fantastic display and snappy processor, specifically thinking of something like the Galaxy A54 or Pixel 8 (on a sale)
a general rule i use regarding technology purchasing is that newest featured top of the line products are best left to rich people who can afford it, as badly as i might want it.
this goes for cars, phones, etc… one benefit to this is that it gives the product time to become not just more affordable, but better quality as well.
the earliest foldables cracked at their fold points, but Samsungs newest fold phone survived JerryRigEverythings bend test which is impressive.
in a few more years, this quality will surely be available at sub 1000 dollar prices, containing the most modern hardware which will be even better than is available now.
Well then maybe don’t charge me 3 months’ rent for one?
And why the market took a dive. Phones were 200-300. Then the iPhones and Galaxy’s jumped them to 500-700. Now any top tier is 1000 plus and people’s income has not compensated. As well as the rest of the crap you need to have all those new phones.
They are completely out of touch with normal everyday working people’s incomes and financial needs.
I think a compounding factor is that the lifespan of phones has also increased. Phone manufacturers are no longer selling a new model to the same user each year.
Once they are cheaper and more durable I’ll buy one. Its still a new form factor that hasn’t been perfected yet, but that doesn’t mean its wrong for manufacturers to keep at it
To add to this my wife got the Samsung Flip or whatever, the one that folds like an old flip phone.
Every year she’s had to have it replaced because the screen cracks in the middle. Fortunately we have the insurance so it’s only $5 to replace it. She just got her third phone this week.
Yes! This! (For now) foldable phones are not a good idea imo. The consumers are using it casually and a lot of designers tend to forget that. It’s not about how it is intended to be used but how the majority is using it. Same with the stylus and the Note 5 in 2015. People inserted the pen backwards and broke the phone. Is it supposed to go in backwards? No. Will people do it accidentally if they are using the phone on a daily bases? Yes. It seems as if the durability tests aren’t adapted enough for new features.
Until phones with a foldable screen are robust enough for the average Joe(-anne) to use, I will not consider buying one, even though the concept seems very useful.
Based on this article consumers overall agree with you. I’m not a fan. But my wife has a real good reason. Pockets in women’s clothes suck as they are tiny or non existent and modern smart phones even the small ones never fit. But her phone when folded does.
I imagine we’ll go through this dance of yearly replacements until T-Mobile gets sick of it 😂
Your wife must be doing something wrong. My Fold 3 has been pristine without a case since I purchased it on day one.
Maybe, probably some trick in the way it gets opened. Or maybe that we live in an arid climate?
Wait, the screen cracks? Or the screen protector? The protectors are known to crack in about a year, but those are cheap and easy to replace, or if you aren’t worried about scratches, just peel it off when it cracks and don’t replace it, screens feel much nicer without the protectors.
Yeah just the protector, Samsung says not to replace it yourself but have a professional do it and since we have the warranty we just can T-Mobile. We keep expecting them to send us to a store to have an employee fix it but they just keep replacing the phone instead. So weird.
I had that issue with mine, turns out there’s a screen protector on the screen when you get it. once I peeled it off I was good as new, although now the screen itself is starting to wear.
Didn’t the folding phones originally get destroyed by people removing the factory screen protector?
Honestly, unless they come out unlocked for like sub $300 I’m unlikely to want to get one as I have had no problem using sub $300 new phones for 4 years now. And no interest in spending more for a tablet - I’ve gotten tablets for sub $250 for like 8 years now and they are good for my needs.
I’m waiting for them to find a better spot on durability, weight /bulkiness and hardware like cameras.
They’re still too big and bulky for me, the other components are usually a bit behind, and the screen durability seems a bit too eeh still.
Which is to say, I’m interested in one, but they’re not there yet for me.
I’ve been daily driving a folding phone for about 3 years now, and honest to God I’ll never buy a normal phone again. It’s a laptop, tablet, phone, and notepad (stylus) all in one. I couldn’t imagine going back.
Also, being able to open two full screen apps side by side becomes essential after you start to rely on it for work.
I get that they are expensive, but the price will come down eventually and the form factor is game changing from a usability perspective.
I’ve never tried a folding phone but to me it seems like a jack of all trades, master of none. The 4:3 aspect ratio, black bars on basically all videos, and easily damaged screen seem like big negatives.
I’d be interested to see if I’m wrong if I ever get a chance to use one.
Yea, the ability to replace a laptop for work is wildly dependent on the work you do. I need Windows or Linux and a keyboard and trackpad or mouse to even attempt to do my job. And it’s much easier with a desktop with lots of RAM and a 24" or larger monitor. Someone else I know rocks a laptop as a daily driver, but it needs to be docked, with 3 monitors to be fully useful.
If you don’t need programs that need a desktop OS (well written web apps only) and only need apps or say Zoom (and no real use of zoom chat or virtual backgrounds etc) then I can see a tablet working.
It’s a laptop, tablet, phone, and notepad The fact you can get all four of those for about the cost of one folding phone if you’re ok with off brands or slightly used really hurts the thing too.
Android runs almost all USB keyboards and mice or touch pads, you can totally have that as an option for your phone. And it’s like 50 bucks to get a powered hub that can also charge the phone OTG while connecting all those USB devices at once.
It is the same size as as the common smaller form factor tablets have been for a decade. And note pads also have been coming in this size for over a century.
It is smaller than the average phone when folded into phone mode. Especially if we are not only talking smart phones, but even if.
They are indeed relatively more expensive right now, I got mine “open box” for half off, and it was about the price of a contemporary regular smart phone then. But they won’t always be this much more expensive.
You are not always near your 75 inch TV. It’s nice to have an acceptable option when out and about. Fold 4 also has spacial audio, you get your head about a foot away from those speakers in horizontal tablet mode, and boom, the virtual surround sound is surprising. (Anyone who has one and hasn’t tried it yet, take this moment to try it out then come back) (it’s pretty crazy, right?)
It is what we claim it is. Just my 2 cents. I hope eventually the price gets to a place where more people can choose it without having to worry about whether they can justify it.
I feel like I’d feel similarly if I had a foldable, but the one guy I know who has one swears he’ll never buy one again. Granted, he got a gen 1 Galaxy Fold, so it’s got some major growing pains.
For what it’s worth, I decided to skip the fold 1 because of all the complaints about the sensitivity of the screen and how easy it was to break. I’ve been running the fold 3, and now the fold 5, and it’s been a tank, even with my two and four-year-old drawing on it using the stylist all the time. I think the newest versions have come a long way since the first version
I wish they would put a proper keyboard on a phone again. There’s dozens of people like me who misses those things, why is nobody doing it?
Totally agree. The smartphone market is wayyy to homogenous. All they compete over is price and what alphanumeric digits the chips contain. Give us foldables, sliders, cheap phones, high end phones, phones full of ports, small phones, and big phones. This is what the phone market used to be about until the mid '10s
And what about phones with a removable battery? Would be real nice to keep a couple spares instead of a big power brick I have to charge it from.
no i love it when my gboard cache fills up or whatever and the typing is so laggy that only 60% of my key presses register and i have to do it really slowly i think it’s good
have you considered a FOSS keyboard? For me, autocorrect is annoying and there is no swiping, but in like 3 weeks you’ll get good enough at typing you’ll need neither.
The same reason for the small phone form factor, the 3.5mm headphone jack, and the replaceable battery disappearance. All extraordinary ideas that I would personally would like to still be a thing for the sake of providing variety and choice to all customers. There’s a vocal minority that constantly asks and demands those features. But when manufacturers make and sell them, they only move a few thousand units in contrasts to the several hundred millions of sales for the traditional models. Because conceptually they might be good sensible ideas, but on a practical sense, they aren’t the main priority of the vast majority.
Why for. ? Maybe what would be better is a VR keyboard. If it can give haptic feedback then do you really need a physical board
The issue is I can touch type / hunt and peck with a physical keyboard, and I never accidentally type something by brushing my finger on the key as I pass. It’s just much faster.
Get a Bluetooth keyboard they’re great, little fold out one size of your phone or a tiny or one that straps to your arm… So many different types, I even saw one built into a phone case
I cannot type worth a shit on the touch keyboard on my Z4, despite it being roughly double the size of the touch keyboard on my first touch-only phone. Hell, I could finger type better on my resistive touch, single point only, meant-to-be-used-with-a-stylus WinCE PDA back in the day. I think this has to do with the edges of the screen being too damn close to the physical edge of the device, so there’s no decent way to simultaneously hold it without dropping it and contort your fingers into the quintuple jointed clawlike posture required to hit the lower row and spacebar.
And I bought my original Z Play on the promise of a physical keyboard Moto Mod, which turned out to be vaporware. Yes, I’m still pissed off about that.
Modern bezeless phones may look all swanky and futuristic sitting there on display in the store but they’re a step backwards in actual usability. I would take a slider or even a clamshell with a physical QWERTY keyboard any day.
