Smartphone manufacturers still want to make foldables a thing

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 251 points – Smartphone manufacturers still want to make foldables a thing
arstechnica.com

Smartphone manufacturers still want to make foldables a thing::Foldables are barely 1% of the market, but that's not stopping anyone but Apple.

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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.

My galaxy fold is 100% a foldable tablet with a pen. When I travel for work, I've stopped bringing my laptop. Just the fold, Bluetooth keyboard, and mouse. It's amazing

So…a touchscreen laptop?

Yes. But smaller, and with a screen where the keyboard should be, and no bezel between the screens. Media consumption device, not something for any real productivity. Very lightweight, good for watching youtube or hulu, but clamshell so it protects the screen.

Yeah, the flip phones especially seem like a good form factor if they can make the price go down.

They already have. I think the Razr can be had at a reasonable price.

AUD 1400 is not a reasonable price to me.

Ah, sorry about that. Seems like all electronics gets way expensive in Australia. Motorola has em for sale for $499 USD (~$739 dollarydoos) here

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?

But that's why they want foldable phones to be a thing.

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.

Also the providers aren't subsidizing the costs as much, probably after realizing that betting on people staying on their plan past the end of the contract led to people just chasing those incentives at other providers once their contract was up.

Not that they aren't subsidizing phones still, they just aren't throwing a hundred or two in gift cards or prepaid credit cards on top of the phone anymore.

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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 😂

I miss the days of tiny phones. I still use an iPhone 12 mini and it’s nearly impossible to find modern Android phones with less than a 6” screen. I don’t understand the obsession with enormous screens. Sure the flagship models could have big screens to pack in bigger batteries and more powerful components—but why is no one making a 4” phone?

Yeah I wonder as well. My wife would rather have that but there are no choices like that anymore. What we used to consider ridiculously huge, because tablets started at 7" became the norm. To think my phone is almost the size of an entry level tablet not that long ago is wild.

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.

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.

Unless I can get it used for 20 bucks and a handy thrown in, NO SALE. Like hombre, you're not the target market for any of this.

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 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 am also waiting to get one for my next phone. I'm hoping when I'm ready to upgrade things will be more durable. As someone who's loved the Note series since my Note 2 I had, I'm a sucker for a bigger screen. I'll probably never go back

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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.

you will never see that happen again. they need phones to be disposable

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.

i use the suggestion strip a lot especially with secondary languages that have larger alphabets

I'm sure even fewer people want the thing I want back: a scroll wheel a la Blackberrys from the '00s. Those things were incredibly accurate and allowed pixel-specific pointing, something that you just don't get from a touchscreen.

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.

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.

Have you customized your touch keyboard at all? You can resize and move it to fit your hands/thumbs. You may even prefer a transparent floating keyboard for some situations, like entering text in a wide-screen game on the outside screen, so the game isn't cut off to like 10% of the height of the screen. And that's just the built-in keyboard. If you go third party there are tons of options.

And if you find yourself accidentally adding letters here and there, you can add a 0.01 second hold time before a key is pressed. Low enough that you'll never have to think about it when actually typing something but high enough to ignore most accidental presses. Also if extra inputs happen without you noticing them and you have to go back and fix them when you do spot them, crank your haptic feedback up higher. Won't miss an accidental press then.

One of the main upsides of Android phones is that you have the ability to spend 30 minutes in the options menu of one tiny element of your phone experience. The default settings work for alot of people, but if they don't work for you, change them.

I use the swiftkey keyboard, and it constantly has me missing letters. I originally got it for on phone predictiveness, but now Microsoft bought it and IDK if it's even good anymore, I'm just used to the layout. But I almost never accidentally start typing the wrong letter on a physical keyboard but it's almost daily on the touch screen ones. I'm constantly missing, hitting delete somehow, having it insert a period and capitalize a word. It's freaking annoying. The issue isn't haptics, it's that there's no bump on the home keys to position my thumb or fingers, there's no way for me to "count" by feel x keys over, and there's no where to rest my hands or fingers on the keys without pressing them.

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.

Omg HARD same.

I really wish creators would stop shifting the goalposts on everything and just make what they said they would. It doesn't need to be balanced, it doesn't need a battery, it just needs to exist.

here’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.

Use an onscreen keyboard that doesn't extend to the edge of the screen? Or get a case that adds size to the phone?

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'm not aware of ones that will let me hold the phone by them - but I tend to not have major brand phones which I'm sure exacerbates this. I had a Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite for 4ish years, I just got a more mainstream OnePlus N30, so maybe I can look for a different case that has a keyboard in it, though I still doubt I could hold by it and double thumb type.

I'll trade you my 3D TV for one.

Hey, old 3D TV's are great...

...As computer monitors. Lots of PC games can be bullied into displaying stereoscopic 3D in one way or other.

I'll trade you two Betamax, an HD-DVD player, and one 8-track of PeeWee Herman performing "Tequila" for your 3D TV.

I'm on a Fold 4, never going back. There are certainly a few tweaks here and there that could improve it, but a tablet that you put back in your pocket when you are done is the perfect phone so far. I don't know what they would have to do to make something better than this, but I'm sure something will come along. Until then, not going back to a phone that can only be bar shaped.

What do people use tablets for? I really wanted to come up with an excuse to get one but no matter how hard I thought about it I couldn't come up with a use case (for me at least). I want my phone to be smaller, not bigger.

I'm studying at the moment, so I do a -lot- of research. A tablet + stylus is perfect for me for taking notes on top of lecture slides and reading / annotating pdfs. A folding form factor would be really useful for me, so I wouldn't have to carry around a second device.

Got it. That's the exact reason I got a folding laptop with a stylus. Annotating and highlighting in pdfs with a pen and typing on a proper keyboard. Once you get used to carry a bag (I used to hate doing that) a smaller laptop can hitch a ride for free.

The only advantage I see are movies, but then again for a static display I can just use my laptop or a TV.

I guess gaming could be something, if you're into that. Personally all those microtransaction BS makes me steer clear of wanting any games on my phone.

Tablets are cheaper and lighter than laptops so if someone just wants to watch videos while traveling or commuting, a tablet is often a better option than a laptop.

What not get a tablet/ laptop hybrid. Two birds one stone.

That's a tablet with a keyboard case

Well no. Like the Microsoft surface. It's a laptop that can be hard as tablet. As powerful enough to do plenty of computer tasks.

It's nice for the few non shitty games that also scale well on the display.

Also watching videos while doing chores, quite convenient.

How are you watching videos while doing chores?

Dishes being an obvious one, just looking up every now an then, I mostly listen/watch long form yt

Imo movies on anything smaller than 40" with a sweet sound system is blasphemy.

And I don't play many games these days but when I do it's on a proper PC for pretty much the same reason (plus the micro transactions as you mentioned).

Also, touchscreens drive me nuts for anything more advanced than like browsing Mastodon.

I have 2 uses for a tablet, and know 2 other uses. They're pretty niche.

  1. you can use it to get AT&T to sell you an unlimited 5g data sim for $20 a month and pop that into a hotspot if you need to work while being driven in a car or in more locations than there's necessarily easy or cheap wifi.

  2. Reading Manga / Comics. I do read some on my phone, but the ability to see the "full page" on a 6.7" phone aspect narrow screen vs a 10" wider aspect tablet screen is surprisingly large, and my eyes are getting worse, not better as I age. Teeny tiny is not the best experience.

  3. Using them as cheaper wacom tablets for drawing / artists.

  4. Work provided portable tools for all sorts of stuff that doesn't have any SIM or monthly fee needed / requested, and something that inherently isn't a phone.

I thought the same but they're great for using at home. My wife watches movies on it in the kitchen, my kid loves it for games, I like it for controlling house stuff like IoT, smart home stuff, and apps for home electronics. It's not too different from smart watches where you don't need anything it offers, but it makes things more convenient.

Now the people who take their tablet to Disneyland to take pictures are just plain crazy and shouldn't be lumped in with the rest of us.

For me it was mainly gaming. Can run two full apps, both in real time, not that thing where it suspends one with a static image when you touch the other one. They both actually run at the same time, full frame rate. The fold 4 in tablet mode "wide" screen is pretty close to 4:3, so it's nice for emulating console and computer games from that era, which I do alot. And the tablet in tall mode is a great size/shape for reading, can even leave it slightly folded down the middle for the real book feel, lol. And the battery life they manage to pack into both halves of the phone is pretty great. But most importantly, putting it back in my pocket when not using it. Carrying even a small tablet around all day would not be awesome otherwise.

I should mention I am 6'4" with relatively large hands, so fold 4 still feels pretty small to me, before I got the handle case I had to make due with palming it when I wanted to hold it one-handed. It's decently comfortable for me to palm it in vertical tablet mode, but horizontal tablet mode while still possible, wasn't comfortable. But with the handle case, it would be comfortable for almost anyone to hold it with one hand.

One of the things I was most worried about was that the screen crease would be visible, or that it would get annoying to play games where you gotta move your finger accross it. Luckily, the crease isn't visible when you are straight head-on with the screen, only when you try to show other people stuff on your phone, lol. And even after more than a year of not treating the phone as anything special, the crease isn't annoying to my fingers either. The original built-in screen protector did peel off from folding the phone alot when it was cold out(Canada), but I normally don't use screen protectors, so I just left it unprotected. Not really sure what you have to do to your phone to benefit from screen protectors, I don't baby mine, but I've never had a scratch. And screen protectors just feel so much worse to use than the naked screen does.

Might be a good time to mention I am autistic and hypersensory, so there is nothing mild about mildly annoying things to me, lol.

Well, it sounds like a good device for you then. Personally I want to be able to use my phone with one hand, so I want to be able to reach the entire screen with the thumb of the hand that is holding the bare phone.

It has the outer screen too for when you want a one-hander. Though you'd have to go with either fold 5 or one of the other brands to get a better outer screen, fold 4 and lower were not particularly useful there. Too skinny. I pretty much only ever use the outer screen for actual phone calls. You can transition from tablet to phone while already having answered the call with no issues.

And as with all larger phones, you always have the option of going into "one-handed mode" using whatever shortcut you assigned(either diagonal swipe or triple tap home are the defaults). It's less necessary when you just have the option of a smaller one handed screen on the outside, but still there if you'd rather that option.

I tried using it for a few months. too many compromises to battery life, the main screen crease etc. just sitting in the closet now. I'll check back when diverging actually good comes out. flop 4

Tablets are much better than phones at trying to do things that are meant to be done in a full computer, while being much more more portable than computers. It'll never be as good as PCs but to some people that's not a big price to pay for the portability.

So virtual desktop?

I think people like tablets a lot more than virtual desktops judging by the sales numbers.

True. But more so you need companies to get into it. They are the ones buying. Plus you would computer-literate staff to get a router with the capability to run a secure VPN. I don't even know if it's possible. I don't see why not. But maybe bandwidth isn't capable

Same. It seems to fall into the niche crack.

Maybe to watch things if you don't have a tv. Maybe to play games again without tv. Portable if you move around a lot.

I can't justify the price for a large screen. I have a larger screen. It's the tv. I have a work laptop and I have a phone.

If anything I'd be pushing for work laptop to disappear. If I could get a virtual computer. I just need a screen to use. Already got a monitor plus wireless keyboard and mouse.

Virtue desktops should be the future

I don't give a flying fuck about foldable screens, give me a real keyboard. The bottom half of one of these flippable screens could totally fit rows of physical buttons!

Omg I can't agree with this strongly enough. Just typing this comment I've had to manually correct multiple typos because even with haptic feedback and autocorrect I still end up with totally garbled text. I have never been able to get the hang of typing on a touch screen. Im still pining for the good old days of blackberries and slide out keyboards.

Hell, even a built in stylus like the galaxy note had would be a welcome fix to constantly fumbling with whatever keyboard I'm trying to make work at the moment.

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I've been using the z flip 4 for over a year now. I think that is what it's called... I won't go back. The foldable phone is awesome.

I've got my Fold 3 and it's amazing. Are there compromises? Absolutely. Are they worth it, also yes.

I've always been the type to upgrade my phone every year, but I'm thoroughly satisfied with this device after 2 years, and don't see myself replacing it anytime soon.

The biggest thing foldables need now isn't new features and spec bumps. What they need is a significant price cut.

Full-size foldable phones still costing $1800 5 years in is why they're such a tiny market share.

Agree, it's hard to imagine not having a fold after using it for a bit

What's holding me back is that I'm worried the fold line would be too distracting, or would get worse over time.

I also love my s23 pen

That's what I thought originally, but the fold is not noticeable at all when you look square at it, as far as how it feels to move your finger over it, it feels like a small tactile bump. Feels nice actually. I use a membrane screen protector and foldable case with no issues, over the last year there has been no degradation of the "crease" or the folding mechanism.

That's good to know! Glad to hear it's working for you

Man I just want a FOSS version of the DS.

Clamshell dual screen has so many advantages.

Even sliding keyboard was great

Clamshell dual screen is the bomb. I don't know why they're jumping so many hoops just to avoid a fucking bezel gutter.

That would the coolest shit imaginable. I'm surprised nobody has tried making a FOSS ecosystem for the DS, considering how often users have hacked it. All I'm saying is, I wish a company would come alone and make a DS like system with modern resolution and cameras. It might do pretty well.

Honestly, there's a completely unfulfilled market for smart phones with physical keyboards right now and fuck capitalism for not meeting this need more efficiently

I love my flip phone. I'd love a phone with a hardware keyboard even more, but at least a folding flip phone is interesting in a sea of rectangles.

Having more mainstream keyboard options would be nice to have.

I think foldables have found a niche market at the moment. People buy them, just not in the quantities the companies might want.

The main reasons for this are Samsung being stagnant on its innovation with foldables (Z flip 5 notwithstanding), much of the competition being limited to China only or aren't being marketed at all, and the book style foldables all being overpriced (they still MSRP for $1700-$1800 plus 1000% storage markups, they should be aiming for a $1200-$1300 MSRP).

Here in the US, we have:

The usual Samsung foldables: The Z flip 5 which is a great device at on okay price, and I've seen a few of these (or the previous gens), notable because 85% of the devices I see are iPhones. The Z Fold 5 is stagnant and overpriced.

Pixel Fold: Hahahahaha it can't even last a week before the screen dies lol lol haha

Moto Razr Flip 40 and its variations: Nobody knows that these phones exist, and the ones who do struggle to even find a place to buy the phone. On Amazon listing for the US version is blended with the international listings and is often out of stock, and Motorola's website gives me an error when I try to get to the buying process on its phones. Also there's like 3 different versions of this phone Real shame, because they are good phones for a great price if you can stomach the poor battery life.

OnePlus Open: Possibly the most innovative phone of 2023, this phone 1-ups the Z Fold line in nearly every way, although it's still pricey. But again, basically nobody has even heard of this brand, much less this phone. They just believe Samsung is the only one that makes foldables while they choose to buy the latest iPhone.

Moto Razr 2020 foldable smartphone (a model earlier than the Razr Flip 40 you mentioned) can be had for $300 to $400 as a refurb/second hand. USA models for AT&T and T-mobile are very common.

I don't find the battery life bad, but I may not be a heavy user by comparison. I love the small form factor, and unlike the Samsung Flip, the Razr doesn't crease the screen (the hinge expands inside to keep it in a U spaced shape).

I don't personally see the appeal of a foldable phone that folds out larger to a square aspect ratio, but ones that keep the normal smartphone aspect ratio (like Samsung flip and Moto Razr) and fold smaller are great!

Lastly, being able hang up the phone call by closing it is very satisfying.

Thinking of that one guy that lost their foldable to a grain of salt after eating something in the train while watching a movie on it and then closing the phone... I hope they never get a real thing

That's unfortunate, I hope the tech progresses to a stage where a salt grain doesn't render it useless.

I still haven't seen a legitimate use case for a flip phone that is 100% screen on the inside.

You're talking about the non-book style ones like the Motorola ones? Yea I have no fuckin clue either lmao, they're cool and maybe has some "reliving the old days" going for it, but beyond that they seem pointless.

Book style ones like the Pixel Fold OTOH are amazing!

I had a Galaxy Flip because I liked the compact size when it was closed, fit really nice in my jeans. Totally useless otherwise though and after the included screen protector cracked, replaced and cracked again I gave it up.

This article seems to only talk about the ones that fold like a book, and not on the ones that fold like a clam. I don't get the fixtation on that design - at this point it's more of a tablet than a phone, and for a tablet it's pretty small. When opened, the Samsung Z Flip has the dimensions of a smartphone - which means you can put it to your ear or operate it with one hand. You can't do that with the Z Fold - it's too wide. Also, the Samsung Z Flip costs half as much as the Z Fold - which is still not cheap, but it's not that much more expensive than Samsung's regular flagship phone with the same specs. So I assume affordable flip smartphones should be possible - maybe not this year, but probably soon enough.

Z Flips sell twice as much as Z Folds - all while Samsung is spending most of the marketing effort on pushing the Fold. Maybe if they focused on the Flip instead they could have made this one "a thing"?

The tablet thing is the point I like about my foldable phone. I couldn't be bothered to carry a tablet with me, but the Fold fits in my pocket without any issues and I love the bigger screen. If I have to use my phone with one hand, I just use the outside screen (which to be fair hasn't the best aspect ratio).

It's odd that we should need to spell out that different devices are designed for different kinds of users with different use cases.

I just want a phone without a front camera

Is that because of the bump it causes, or something else?

I never used it and I don't like screens with a notch.

Oh, silly me - I misread it as the rear facing camera :)

Notches suck, they're just an anti feature, but considering the vapid selfie generation, I suspect they get a lot of use

I don't take selfies, and certainly don't post them to social media, but I still use my front facing camera all the time. Zoom/Teams/WhatsApp video calls are a big part of modern life. That's what the camera's actually for, in the context of being a "phone".

My bank requires it for certain actions, where I have to put my face into the frame and blink.

~the vapid selfie generation~ is such a Boomer phrase lmao

Anyone who is interested in a foldable. Check eBay or Swappa. I was really surprised to find them 2nd hand for like 600-800. Which is crazy considering how much they sell for new.

I'm willing to buy one if:

  • Main screen will be harder than LVL 2-3
  • Have better battery life
  • Cheaper

You might have to settle for a "two screens that meet in the middle when unfolded" style folding phone. They have different problems, but screen hardness is something they can do, since no actual folding happens to the screen.

They do have good battery life, I have to be playing a GPS game at 120 hz outdoors and thus full brightness and outside ideal operating temperature for the battery to get my fold 4 under 4 hours of playtime. Using it normally, like spending half my day on it playing regular games at reasonable settings, and the other half browsing news on lemmy and other "social media news aggregates", I am still around 30% or so by bed time. On a day where I didn't game much, I could just not charge it do that again the next day.

Price is definitely where they could do with some work. But I got mine open box, so half price. Was about equal to contemporary standard smart phones then. At least when they are not open box.

They’ll catch on and become highly desirable approximately 1 minute after Apple makes one.

I love the idea of big screen foldables. They are just way too expensive for me to justify. I've used the one plus open and man I really wish I could afford it. I do a lot of my mobile computing on my phone instead of a laptop and the foldables make it much more enjoyable.

My current phone is now well over two years old, and is desperately NOT in need of an upgrade. I can't imagine replacing it with anything but a book style foldable. Anything else just wouldn't feel like an upgrade. I'm just waiting for the prices to get sensible.

I loved my z fold 3. Took too many falls and the inside screen had it. Would happily get another if they weren't so expensive.

Foldable phones are so fetch!

Stop trying to make "fetch" happen. It's not going to happen.

I have no idea what "fetch" is supposed to mean but I don't like it. It's not putting any pussy on the chain wax.

I love my foldable, but I got lucky and thats why I was able to buy it. They are way too expensive and my fucken singer in my highschool band showed me a bendable screen way back then like 10 years ago. Shit is supposed to get cheaper, thats what keeps this death machine running.

Saw this on mastodon yesterday and it got me to thinking... Does anyone know of a dual-screen phone (not the foldable style discussed here) that has something smaller like 4" screens? The only models I found had either a 2.5" or 6" screen, neither of which would work for me. I prefer something that can fit in my pocket and a dual screen might be a nice solution for me since a keyboard in landscape mode takes up so much of the screen.

Oppo find n2 fold have screens around 5.5 and as big as modern iPhone se

Thanks but this is still a foldable, not two separate screens, and is still substantially larger than the 4" screen size I was asking about. I could probably go up as high as 4.5"? I don't know what the fascination is with these massively huge screens these days, people might as well be trying to carry a tablet in their pocket.

It's probably don't sell anymore but look up yotaphone

That's definitely a unique phone, it looks like the company went bankrupt in 2019. I'm afraid I wasn't clear about my need for a dual-screen, however, as my target usage is to have the second screen act as the keyboard since sliders are no longer available. Obviously this model wouldn't work for that, but thank you for pointing it out.

Then check this out https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/astro-slide

I actually did see that model recently but it's ridiculously expensive, and I'm not sure you understand what a 4.5" screen means. I did pull up my current phone and it's actually listed as a 4.6" screen (the whole phone is 129x65mm). The search on GSMarena is apparently broken because when I try to find anything with a max size of 135x70 it doesn't even bring up the line of models my phone is from despite them having pages for each of the phones, so I've given up trying to find anything there.

What really drives me nuts is that technology is supposed to get smaller over time, and yet cell phones are going in completely the wrong direction. I used to be able to get phones with a 4" screen and a slider keyboard that was very easy to type on, and yet trying to type on a larger on-screen keyboard feels cramped and even after several years of practice still results in constant errors. This requires using the stupid spell checker, which itself introduces frequent errors to the words I DID type correctly so I still spend a lot of time correcting mistakes in every test I send.

Oh, I do hate touchscreen keyboards. They do suck. But I don't think a foldable phone would help there, I wish they'd bring back sliders or make a clamshell like the tablet keyboard covers, but make it possible to hold the phone by the keyboard.

I've seen a number of pictures of dual-screen clamshell type phones where the second screen is used as the keyboard, and I would assume a foldable could be used the same way? That's what got me thinking of checking into the models of phones available now with dual screens that might fit the bill.

I have a Sony Xperia compact (4.6" screen) that I designed and 3D-printed a custom case for which includes a slide out tray to hold a keyboard. I designed a keyboard circuit board with the assumption of connecting it directly to the USB port, but can't seem to find a suitable way to break out the existing USB-C port to provide a second very simple USB connection (without compromising the USB-C functionality of the primary port) that I could connect the keyboard to. My alternate plan is to upgrade from an Arduino chip to an ESP32 Pico D4 chip which could provide a bluetooth connection to the phone. I'm currently trying to wrap up some custom circuit boards for some computer control on a model train layout, but maybe I'll get back to this project once that one is finished.

Hmmm, nice, but I have no 3D printer or ability to custom program a keyboard chip.

Yeah this definitely isn't a project for everyone. At the moment I'm not even quite sure how I would print the keys nicely although I do have some ideas. Maybe some day I'll get back to it and make it work.

In a few years apple will release one, act like they invented it. The fanboys will pay whatever price apple is selling it for and foldables will be mainstream.

Apple products aren't that good but their marketing is second to none.

My main concern is durability. The inner screen is way too fragile to be used without giving it any thought. Until durability is addressed to a sufficient extent that the device hardware can outlast its software support with everyday use, I prefer to stay in candy bar phones without my tablet in tow.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Foldables, which have a screen that opens like a book or compact mirror, barely exceed a 1 per cent market share of all smartphones sold globally almost five years after they were first introduced.

“We will continue to position our foldables as a key engine for our flagship growth with the clear differentiation, experience and flexibility these devices have to offer,” said Samsung.

Other handset makers such as Motorola, China’s Huawei and its spin-off Honor are also pinning their hopes on the product helping to revive a market that suffered its worst year for more than a decade.

Every other big smartphone maker has followed Samsung into the market, including Google’s Pixel Fold and Chinese alternatives from Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi.

“We believe foldables are the future of smartphone devices, just like electric cars were to the auto industry,” said Bond Zhang, UK chief executive of Honor.

Counterpoint Research estimates about 16 million foldable phones will be sold this year, just 1.3 per cent of the 1.2 billion smartphone market total.

The original article contains 357 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 52%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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I just want an LGV20 with upgraded specs. Make that while you're at it.

Removable battery, 3.5mm Jack, quad DAC, physical sim, SD slot. God that was great. I recently got a xcover 6 pro which is updated and close enough; it's waterproof to boot. Definitely not flagship though.

I'll look at it. Thanks for the recommendation. I don't care about having a flagship phone if it can't do the things I want from it. Those things are all made for the iPhone crowd anyway.

This is what puts me off.

Runar Bjørhovde, an analyst at Canalys, said return rates of foldables are 5-10 percent, far higher than traditional smartphones and a deterrent to repeat purchases.

A phone costing me four digits with that high a return rate. Nope.

The idea is great but without devs focusing on making good use of it... Smells like 3D TVs to me

I know we're supposed to be talking shit about foldables but I'd rather remark on how badly I want a rollable phone

Phones started skimping on ram, removed sd card slots, still put on insane markups for added storage (like seriously, companies still want hundreds more for a 512GB phone when the larger chip costs them like $10 over a 64GB.), removed the headphone jack, left batteries non replaceable, refuse to have bigger batteries, and have peaked on resolution and refresh needs.

The last couple years have provided Jack shit to make anyone with half a brain want to upgrade. Let alone the idiotic pricing. $1400 for a cell phone? That's more than what companies are wanting for 80" tvs and gaming laptops now days. I can buy a 4,000 pound beat up used vehicle that still runs for $1400.

I feel like the percentage of the market that wears button down shirts but also needs a smart phone for business, that is also small enough to close the flap so the phone doesn't fall in cow shit or go up the grain auger, is comparatively small. It's really annoying they haven't changed those pockets from cigarette pack size to smart phone size.

I do not like foldable I do not like them not one bit.

I do not like them on a plane, I do not like them on a train.

Would you like them on a boat? Would you, could you with a goat?

I probably could with a goat, but I wouldnt talk about it publicly and it would take a lot of bourbon.

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Those are the places where I'd be most likely to want one.

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I hope all these big companies pump billions into this tech and lose it all.

They should bring back PHONES.

I don't know if I actually need a computer that is better at the COMPUTER part than the PHONE part.

They make plenty of 'dumbphones'. They sell them at Walmart/Best Buy/Amazon so they're not exactly hard to find. If you don't want a smartphone why are you spending 10x the price of the thing you want?

Are you really having trouble with call quality? Unless I'm so far out in the sticks I don't have signal at all it hasn't been a noticeable consideration in years personally.