Foldable smartphones have reached their fifth major generation, as heralded by Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Fold 5…
For me it’s definitely the durability concerns. I’ve valued my phone’s water and dust resistance since getting an ip67 phone years and years ago. My brother had a flip and a grain of sand in his pocket got under the display; when he closed the phone the display died. And they expect me to pay more for the privilege.
It’s a gimmick that makes phones less reliable and doesn’t add value to the experience.
I respect your opinion, but for me is it hardly a gimmick. I don’t need a tablet in my bag to view websites that aren’t compatible with mobile layouts, I have a tablet in my pocket whenever I want. Sure it’s not for everyone, just like iPhones vs Android, but the form factor of foldables absolutely solves the needs of some customers and I’m grateful there’s a line of products out there that fits my needs.
It took me a week or so to get used to the form factor but since then I can’t imagine going back to a slab. Different strokes for different folks.
I have literally never encountered the problem you’re describing.
I work with a lot of crappy websites and embedded systems. I can’t always carry a laptop, so a mobile device fits my use case very well. I also use my large screen to do split screen with two apps open at once, it makes taking notes and observations from videos and documentation a breeze.
Then you realize that your special niche case is uncommon to say the least.
Why the fuck would I want mechanical stress?
The phrase “what’s stopping you” implies we’re all interested, but hesitant.
This is a really, really bad assumption.
Why are you not interested? I personally like the idea of either having a normal size phone that gets larger or a normal size phone that gets smaller. Are you saying you sre not interested in foldable phones at all?
Disinterest is the default position until something sparks interest. Asking why I’m not interested is, with respect, a nonsense question that can only have one answer: because I haven’t seen anything about it that sparks my interest. “It folds” is not enough to make me feel any desire to own one; I don’t care that it folds. I don’t need it to fold. To me, this is like installing a microwave in my vacuum cleaner. Like, sure, now my vacuum cleaner objectively does more stuff and “is better,” but that’s not exactly a feature I’m looking for in a vacuum cleaner, and size-changing is not a feature I’m looking for in a phone.
If you want one, you should get one. I’m glad the option exists so that people for whom “it folds” is enough to spark interest can be happy and have neat toys.
I respect your opinion although I cant see why you think foldable phones dont make the phone “better”.
Foldable just means more things to break. How is that better?
Foldables have the potential to make phones better for some people. But better is always subjective. And in my opinion the current faults with foldables means they aren’t ready for me to use yet.
So the response to “what’s stopping you from getting a foldable” is: the currents faults in foldable. See? Its not too hard.
The trade off of a phone being half as tall is it’s twice as thick.
I’m a man and pockets for men usually aren’t super short so the phone being tall isn’t an issue. And I definitely don’t want the phone to be twice as thick. Women’s clothes with their awfully small pockets I could understand. But I’m a big MFer so pocket size isn’t a problem.
It also assumes there’s anything stopping us. I’m annoyed they didn’t have a “nothing” option on the poll. I’ve been loving my Flip 4 and hope they keep making options like it when I eventually wear it down.
Price. It’s just too high to consider for me right now when I can get phones with the same computing power for half the cost
Uhh the price tag? I just bought a new phone after 6 years of honoured service from my old one, payed the new one a whopping 300€ and it already felt like a rip off. Ain’t no way I’m paying four digits for a phone.
My current phone still works.
Pretty much this. And they are still too expensive.
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I don’t see the point of it. It might be smaller in height when folded, but it’s twice as thick. That doesn’t make it any easier to pocket.
It also seems unnecessarily over complicated. The folding screen technology also doesn’t seem mature (high crease failure). I would think at least one or two phone companies would design them so they just met at a bezel-less seam rather than trying to actually fold an oled/lcd screen.
Same with me. I just don’t see the point. I can’t think of a situation where I need my screen to regularly get bigger or smaller. It might be helpful once in a while, but not enough to get a phone that does that.
They’re prohibitively expensive, the aspect ratio is dumb, and the fold/crease is distracting as hell.
It reminds me of back in the '00s when people were getting the sidekick or whatever that “T” shaped phone was that Tony Stark had in Ironman.
Price, durability, use case…
There’s nothing about them that makes them worth sacrificing the first two above.
-Not durable (If you can damage the screen with your fingernail it’s not durable enough. Period.) -No headphone jack
- No expandable storage
- No removae battery
- Lack of support for folding screens in apps
- Extremely high prices
Everything this guy said, and is like to add ‘any desire to own a gimmick phone’
The price, the line down the middle, the hinge. Generally just not requiring any more screen space
Cost and durability
For real, it’s that easy for foldables. Sub-$500 foldables with really durable screens seems another decade or so away however.
Cost
durability
Size
difficult to repair (if not impossible)
lack of sdcard (on such a large body)
No open source ROMS
Why do you need SD cards in 2023? Most phones don’t have this?
To double or more the storage for much cheaper than the internal storage upgrades cost… is that not enough? Even the folds don’t have more than 512gb and they cost over $1000. My sub $500 phone from years ago is running a 512gb SD card, which I can seamlessly slot into my next phone when I swap.
Sure, but why do you need Storage in the first place? I have always had less than 100gb and it’s plenty for all apps etc. Everything else goes in the cloud
Just because it works for you means it should work for me? I want more storage than you need.
For one thing- if you take lots of photos and videos.
Why need storage at all?
Have the thing connect to the Internet to do even basic tasks like answering the phone.
A mainframe of sorts.
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Sure, let me pay the same I did for the SD card for half as much storage that will expire in a year ($40 for 200GB in GDrive). It’ll be super handy when I am on 250MB of cell data or have no reception at all and want to listen to my music in the cloud.
To carry the backup data to another phone If it fails.
To have my high quality music and movies with me, at all times.
I don’t mind spending on good tools, but I won’t buy a highly locked down device at any cost. An open source OS is a must, any new device will have to compete with my current phone that also has an SD card, headphone jack and is easy enough to open so that I can change the battery myself. Folding phones are inferior in all those aspects.
Price
