Smartphone manufacturers still want to make foldables a thing
Smartphone manufacturers still want to make foldables a thing
Foldables are barely 1% of the market, but that's not stopping anyone but Apple.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
dozens of people
Including me I guess that makes thirteen of us now.
dozens
That makes you number 25
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
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.
Would love something like that if it were available.
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
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!
That's just Flip Phones with more steps.
We have come full circle to what smartphones we're like 10 years ago.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/top-smartphones-qwerty-keypad-152557008.html
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.
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.
If I had a 3d tv I'd happily do this deal
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 have 2 uses for a tablet, and know 2 other uses. They're pretty niche.
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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.
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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.
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Using them as cheaper wacom tablets for drawing / artists.
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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.
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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.
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.
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
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
N900 gang represent
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.
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.
SOMEONE never heard of the Surface Duo...
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.
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.
You can take my foldable out of my cold dead hands!
which one do you have?
zFold 4
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 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.
I still haven't seen a legitimate use case for a flip phone that is 100% screen on the inside.
Takes up less pocket space and the primary screen is more protected.
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.
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 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.
They’ll catch on and become highly desirable approximately 1 minute after Apple makes one.
I'm willing to buy one if:
- Main screen will be harder than LVL 2-3
- Have better battery life
- Cheaper
Literally none of those things will be true.
They definitely will be, question is how long it'll take
100% yes.
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.
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.
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.
Streets ahead!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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 hope all these big companies pump billions into this tech and lose it all.
Fetch.
looks like shit.
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.