Folding Phones Are the Worst Thing to Happen to Smartphones
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100 replies
AI is the worst thing to happen to smartphones.
Bootloader unlocking being removed more is the worst thing to happen to smartphones
OK, I'll agree to second place for AI then. That puts folding phones into third place at worst.
True. Folding phones are stupid, almost noone will buy them and they will eventually stop producing them.
But not so for LLMS, they don't function through basic market mechanisms, since they exist through the AI circlejerk bubble. They will keep pushing LLMs, incorporating it into more and more until the entire UI of the phone is just one LLM which you have to interact with to make it do anything.
the only people I see with foldables are people who buy their phones from their carriers on payment plans.
The trick is to buy last year's foldable for around 1/3 used.
I got my fold 7 a month before 8 was announced for 1/3 of the price of a new 8 Ultra , it's even running oneui 9 now. Not much has changed.
i have one, i didn't get it on a plan. i love it (its a Moto 50 Ultra flip) small outside screen can do lots of things, folds up tiny in my pocket.
Got my Moto 50u really cheap, 50% off and had a $300 gift certificate about to expire (here in Australia)
Like the Samsung Fold 8 for many of the same reasons but im not rich, so maybe when the Fold 10 comes out and there's a clearance sale :) ... but would never go back to a slab now.
glad you're enjoying it!
Samsung sold 10 million so far, Nostradamus.
The worst thing to happen was the boring black rectangle format winning and all other designs disappearing. You don't have to buy a foldable if you don't want to. It's next to impossible to buy anything that's doesn't look like every other phone on the market.
I miss full slide-out qwerty keyboards.
Same 😢 I've been looking around for one for years but there's nothing that can run deGoogled android.
No slide out, but unihertz and clicks are both making a BlackBerry style form factor with android and physical keyboard :)
(Clicks one is called the clicks communicator. Figured I'd mention since that might be helpful to know if anyone wanted to look it up)
I'm familiar with both. I think it's possible to run LineageOS on some unihertz but the support is not solid enough for me to risk it. Clicks is fairly new, I think they open source some stuff but it's not supported by anything deGoogled yet.
Oops, I think I meant to reply to the same person you were replying to
I do think I saw clicks say they were talking to a custom ROM project, but I'm not positive I'm remembering that right
I loves those. No waterproofing though. That's how my last one got deatroyed
That was the peak of pre-iPhone cell phone tech imo
i miss SD card slots
You can buy a modern reasonably powerful flipphone that runs android, there just aren't enough people interested in something that isn't the brick because the brick is, for most people, the optimal form factor for a phone.
The worst thing to happen was the huge 6' screen. I just want a small phone with doesn't rip my jean's pockets and easy to handle with one hand.
Aren't there plenty of those? They're just not flagship models.
Sadly no. unless it's some nameless knockoff brand.
I invite you to actually check, there's actually nothing modern below 6 inches, except those gimmicky 3" screen phones you can find on temu and such
Your 6' phone would look enormous next to an 18" replica of stonehenge
that's one reason I use a Moto 50u flip, excellent pocketablity and the tiny outside screen is fine for message replies, reading short emails, time, day calender etc etc
A six foot screen will always rip your jeans unless you are a T-Rex.
Two bricks held together with a hinge is weaker than just a brick... Who would have thought...
True, but if both bricks and the hinge are made of tungsten, it's not going to matter that much anyway if you're just dropping it onto a wood floor. Like, what you said isn't wrong, but you're insinuating that the creators weren't aware of that fact when they made the thing
These are absolutely a gimmick. A fun gimmick for sure, but not worth the prices for flagship phones these days, especially when cheaper non-folding phones are more durable
I wouldn’t say it’s a gimmick, but I agree with being too expensive for what it is.
I do a lot of reading (books, articles, manga, etc) and I love the idea of regardless of where I am, I can double the size of my screen and get some reading done.
Also, Bloons td 6, I think this game benefits from a bigger screen.
Alas, I already have an e-ink tablet and my phone is too recent, so I could never justify buying one of these. But maybe someday
I've sunk many hours of playing the OG Rollercoaster Tycoon and OpenTTD on my foldable screen; perfectly optimized. I don't think I would have even 5% of that time on a rectangular phone
Had folding phones had a good stylus support, they would have been an absolutely amazing piece of tech. I remember only 2 Samsung phones had it, and then it got discontinued. What a bummer.
The fold series still supports stylus
The latest fold doesn't. I double checked it, fold is now too thin to have S pen inside the body. And it likely isn't going to be supported in future generations either.
They've never integrated the pen with the body afaik, wife and I had the 2/3/4/5,generally we just got a case with the Spen holder.
Still though they function on the inner screen is my point, it is supported functionally.
The outer screen tho doesn't work with the pen.
Personally I went to a Pixel when I started having hinge issues on my 4, have become increasingly anti-Google so got graphene and homelabbed up.
Not on fold 7 & 8. The stylus doesn’t work on either display.
Damn no shit, what a weird step back for no reason.
I had three stylus phones over 6 years. Never used the stylus once. Ever. Samsung got user data back and ditched it.
My wife loves her foldable phone. Why when first one broke I got her another one.
Guess who’s laughing all the way to the bank
Hint: it sure as fuck ain't me.
Or you!
no one was laughing, not even the crickets
A flip 7 is under $600.
From the article:
“I recently posted my take about this on Mastodon and I accidentally rage-baited one of my good friends who daily-drives a folding phone. So he messaged me on Signal passionately defending it. He finds it useful as a phone + iPad Mini replacement, especially since he bought his used for $400”
Therein lies the issue. The future that Apple, Google, et al sees is one where we move towards device convergence. There was a brief period where it wasn’t uncommon for a person to have a phone, tablet, laptop or desktop, etc. if you go back a bit more there were even more devices (iPods, cd players, etc). but the modern context has shown that phones can do a LOT of compute. An iphone 16 pro max from 2 years ago can perform around the level of a GeForce 1050, an aging but still somewhat viable card, except where that takes around 75 watts the iphone gpu takes 6-7 (lol). The iphone 18 pro max is closer to a 1060, which is about double the compute power. And then you have stuff like the m5 ipad which is a bit more powerful.
They’re not top end machine equivalents but they don’t have to be. 80-90% of users (possibly more) don’t do anything that requires such compute power. This has been reflected in consumer spending for years now. Smartphone and laptop sales are still growing, albeit at a slower rate, whereas desktop and laptop sales continue to fall. The future is people using smartphones for everything, tablets for power users, and laptops/desktops for the extreme high end power users. This sucks because it’s an ergonomic nightmare to do everything on your phone, the walled garden approach of all major phones will greatly hasten everything being locked down, mobile browsers are trash and even though the majority of traffic comes through them web designers still ignore making sites work on mobile browsers, etc
Of course the anti corporatist narrative fits in well here: these companies are excited for this convergence because it shifts control away from the user. The pc by nature is an open platform and has to have some degree of openness to work with multiple hardware configurations and peripherals. The phone is consistent hardware (extremely so in apples case) and the precedent has long been set for locked down everything. at the same time the consumer eats this shit up despite tons of people yelling about it so maybe we deserve it. But convergence makes sense from a consumer perspective too; we can’t afford to buy a laptop, phone, and tablet.
Nah. The worst possible thing they could be is the second worst thing.
The worst thing to happen to smarohones was when Androids stopped coming with slide-out physical keyboards.
Fuck Apple for many reasons, but the onscreen keyboard is the most egregious and unforgivable of those reasons.
It was ok until predictive text and swiping went completely to sit (for example).
It was never ok. It was tolerable, but I resented losing the keyboard before I got to.the second generation of phones that didn't have one.
I'd happily pay the absolutely stupid prices they want to charge for the stupid foldy phones to get something with modern flagship specs and the form factor of the G1.
Just use an usb-c keyboard, you can use a much bigger one than would ever fit in a phone. Those tiny ones where a thumb covers 5 keys at a time weren't that great, SwiftKey is much faster
No. It should be integrated into the phone, impossible to leave somewhere and incapable of having connection issues.
The fact that most smartphone users are illiterate and would rather watch a video and send voice notes than actually write anything worth reading isn't an excuse to make the phone useless to anyone capable of forming complete sentences.
I find those tiny keyboards much harder to use than my onscreen kb. I still get like 60 wpm without swipe or autocorrect or anything which is easily sufficient. Sure it's not nearly as fast as a PC kb but I can't imagine I'd be faster on a tiny physical one.
Great, another thing to carry in my pocket
Everything has a drawback. built in keyboard was a nightmare to fix.
That's anecdotal, the manufacturers themselves admit that the hardware is statistically less durable than brick phones and there's plenty of 3rd party data to support it.
Less durable is not the same as fragile. All smartphones today are way more durable than any smartphone from 10 years ago.
It’s a tradeoff of a little less durability for a bigger screen when you want one.
Maybe from 10 years ago, but not twenty!
I mean, here's one from a manufacturer themselves admitting brick phones are more durable.
https://www.honor.com/my/blog/common-durability-issues-in-foldable-phones/
Honor is one of the largest foldable phone manufacturers worldwide, and they have something like 5-10% of the global smartphone market. You not knowing they exist is just you being ignorant of the global market 🙄
Sure buddy. I provided sources and info. You decided 'anything on YouTube is crap', 'major manufacturer doesn't count', and are now resorting to ad hominems. There's no winning when the goalposts keep moving, and you're obviously not interested in civil discussions. Ciao.
People of Lemmy are conservative, they get confused and scared of our modern world.
Why do you change so often?
How do you even make a protective case for these? Seems like it's too easy to drop it and crack the screen
The back of the phone is completely covered aside from the camera lenses, the 'front' has a raised edge around the perimeter of the screen, and when they open to reveal the 'inside' both of those parts end up in your hand so you don't notice them. So basically a regular phone case that can fold. I've been using one for over a year, dropping it constantly cause I'm a natural butterfingers, and even though the case DID break (see below), it broke before the screen did. The screen has a tiny, almost imperseptible fracture and I'm not even sure when I got it but it hasn't affected a single thing. I should point out that when I got it, the only case available at the Verizon store was pretty mid and I've just been too lazy to get a good case.
In short, just look up some (good) screens and you'll see that it's pretty intuitive. As for the screen strength, I'll admit I had the same worry as you but this is honestly the strongest phone I've probably ever had. 10/10 would recommend if interested
Believe it or not but my zflip 5 is the longest survivor out of my devicez so far
the screen is flexible. that's the point.
A folding phone isnt inherently unrepairable. Yes it is less durable but if you look some of them the only drawback is that the internal screen scratches easily and are otherwise very stable. Would i get a folding phone to use as a phone? No, but as a mini tablet it is extremely neat. And once again, as all devices, you can make them repairable. But yes they are more expensive but you know you dont have to buy them right? You know you could just buy a fairphone, put linux on it and use that for like 8 years or what the support is?
I really loved the new razr I had for the last two years. Hella fun to play with...but everyone's right. It's a fragile gimmick going after your nostalgia. Folding screens like this just aren't ready for the abuse we put on them.
I bought a 2023 Razr not long after its successor came out. The phone was only $550 because I wasn't buying a current flagship (it doesn't matter whether or not it's foldable, flagship phones have gotten obnoxiously expensive), and so far it's held up just fine. There's creases in the protective layer over the screen where it bends the most, but it's not anything that really hinders my user experience.
The fact that it actually fits in my back pocket without destroying the fabric is a huge plus for me.
I loved mine until it exploded! :'( Now I have a unihertz titan. It's a really fun little phone!
How did your Razr die? Battery went up, or the screen just gave out?
The hinge must have been a little cracked. I opened it and the screen bulged out and spiderwebbed immediately. It was scary tbh!
Oooof, that sucks. My sympathies. ....I should probably set up some sort of automated backup of my phone's contents for when it inevitably dies...
I love mine, had a folding for for 5 years now. Currently using a Razr. They work great, display works for about 2-3 years is my experience. It's usually cheaper to buy a new one than repair as the display assembly is a new chassis with the hinge.
I don't use a case, the display is protected by closing it, but Motorola included one and they include the protective screen cover (mandatory). As flexible display technology improves, I expect they will last longer.
A whole group of folding phone haters has emerged, normal people just don't buy the thing they don't want. Theses people go on crusades blathering on about their opinion, of which I couldn't care less about. They seem to be triggered by the area where the display bends ( I don't notice it) but it is there and I can feel it, how fragile the device is but I see people with broken displays on regular phones all the time, and the price ( they can't afford one? ). I assume they just need a proper hobby.
Seems insane to say "they work great" followed by "the screen lasts about 2-3 years." Seems insanely wasteful. I use my phones for at least 5 years now. To spend that much money on something that you're essentially forced to replace that often is so wasteful.
Yeah, I respect my hard earned pennies and I cannot commit to a folding phone due to their longevity.
Yes, this is ridiculous. My last iphone lasted 6 years, I bought one of those kits to DIY replace the battery at about year 4 to get more time out of it before I traded it in. 2-3 years means you’ve likely just paid it off for only a year before buying again.
No need to get past the 3rd sentence; it speaks for itself how dumb folding phones are. Screen just takes a shit after 3 years and it’s cheaper to replace than repair lol do you not hear yourself? What do you see as a gain for it? I don’t feel my iPhone 16 needs to fold up shorter and thicker, I don’t need a crease in my display, I don’t get scratches and I don’t need a screen protector. It’s a gimmick.
I used to be a fold hater until I got one..now I've had 3 folds and never going back to a boring slab phone AND a mini tablet , my fold 7 is a all in one that fits in my pocket and weighs the same as a mini tablet minus the extra phone. My gf got my old fold and now lives off it as she runs 3 apps at once on it. Before she lugged around a s23ultra and and 13inch tablet.
The secret is to buy last year's model used at 1/3 the price of new and the haters are people who never actually used one especially for multi tasking multi windows which is why they don't understand them. I was one til I did.
I really like the idea of a tri-fold phone running Nura that can revert to a tablet or desktop. It's one device for multiple form factors, for different use cases.
9000 dolla dolla. Insert cash or select payment type.
Huh? It's the one real smartphone innovation I've seen in the last decade or so. A phone that can become a tablet would be very useful.
Worst is definitely losing the sd card slot.
Still literally zero good reason for them to exist
As a foldable owner: you are wrong. You may not care for it, I respect that much.
They easily fit into any pocket. This isn't rocket appliances.
Thats not a reason for it to exist. Normal phones do that even better
And if, for some reason, you want/need double the size of a regular phone screen?
Or just want to be able to fold your regular phone into something half the size? Because I'll tell you, a normal phone does NOT fit easily into smaller pockets without risking falling out (or gradually ripping holes in them, as several of my pairs of pants can attest to).
a) you dont
b) an absurdly over-engineered solution to your trouser pocket being too small
I got an "open box" OG Pixel Fold for $350 last November. Everything else new or refurb in the price range was just another rectangular slab. I like the squarish aspect ratio for chess and reading but 16:9 video comes with black bars coving 1/3 of the screen. I dislike the taller foldables that came after and I assume it'll be much more than 2 years before the new passport shaped foldables are available as refurbs for less than $500 so if/when this one conks out I'll be back to using a slab phone as a hotspot for an ipad mini.
I've been using a Galaxy Flip for years. Never going back to the big slab. Rumors of screen life are pure internet bullshit.
My biggest gripe is a lack of low-end phones with massive screens that aren’t high-end.
Both my parents are octogenarians with declining vision. I just want to get them into an iPhone whose screen they can actually see easily, but without going into that low-functionality “assistive access” mode.
Because it doesn’t help if the interface doesn’t allow you to tell apart two different phone numbers for the same person. Like, literally - it just shows the label, not the phone number, and when both numbers have the same label…
I thought people love paying for things that break easily.
/s for those who think at the speed of sloth
Worst might be a bit dramatic but I personally have never seen the point in folding phones. They dont fold out big enough to become a tablet but cost twice as much as buying a regular phone and a tablet separately.
This writer clearly hasn't been to China where we have had generations of foldables. The last two gens are amazing from all manufacturers. The latest Xiaomi 18 fold sold out in one day. Just the usual ignorant western point of view.
You say that like the western market hasn't had generations of foldables out as well...
I don't get it. If a larger screen is so important to you, why not just use a tablet? They have tablets that are almost that small. It just seems like it's not big enough to help with much that a tablet won't do better. I know it's an extra device, but I doubt most people REALLY need the extra screen space that badly, and if they REALLY do, a tablet would serve that need much better.
1-Watching videos are always a little bigger. Most videos made nowadays are in 16:9 so it isn't THAT much of a difference honestly, but if I'm watching something in the old 4:3 format I can zoom in so it fills the entire screen (basically two 'normal' phones stacked on top of each other. Also, even in the former case, the subtitles usually appear BELOW the screen instead of blocking something from the actual show
2-Gaming. More or less the same as the above but some games are specifically programmed for the larger screens and they are a GODSEND for when I'm trying to play strategy games. I'm going to lump "typing" in here as well just because I feel way less fat-fingered typing with the full screen; functionally it's not all that different than the norm but it certainly feels a lot more natural this way, at least for me (though admitedly, the split in the middle of the keyboard took a little bit to get used to, see below)
3-Depending on the apps/browsers/whatever, I can have 2 windows open on the same screen. Very helpful for when, for example, a friend texts me a question on one side and I'm like 90% sure I know the answer but just to be safe I do a Google search with the other side. This one is admitedly niche but sure comes in handy when I want it.
4-Probably the biggest reason is simply "I want a tablet that can fit in my pocket." I don't always use it in tablet form, sometimes the phone is all I need at the moment and then it goes right back into my pocket. But then when I WANT the tablet, I don't need to go fetch it from another part of the house, or bemoan the fact that I left it at home, or whatever; I guess "having the different options available" is probably the best way to put it. This even applies to when I'm trying to balance or prop it up somewhere; if one configuration doesn't work for whatever reason, the other probably will.
TL;DR Having options is nice. Do I NEEEEEED my videos/games to be bigger or a tablet that I can fit in my pocket? No, but after having that power in my fingertips (literally) I'm probably not going back anytime soon
For those who buy them, they only need to last a year.
I don't know what people do with tablet-size phones. I feel like they're mostly to show off.
A lot of reading (especially PDFs), videos, comics, charts, spreadsheets, even browsing Lemmy when the comments get too indented to read on a narrow screen. It's just a full color e-reader that fits in my pocket. Sure, people comment on it sometimes when I unfold it to show them something better, but I could not care less about showing off. It's just really useful for a frequent reader.