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.
I actually had a z fold 3. I absolutely loved it! Battery life was great for my usage and the extra screen space was wonderful. You don’t notice the crease when your actually using it. You only notice it when your actually looking for it.
What stopped me from getting the next one was because on my device I saw what I assumed were hair line cracks that were developing at the crease. At first I thought it was scratches but eventually more showed up. As a former technician I knew my screen was going to fail soon. The unfortunate part was I had the phone financed through my carrier and these started to develop well before my upgrade period. It made it just a little over a year when this started to happen. This prompted me to pay it off the rest of the way and trade it in for a more conventional phone.
Again I loved it. But I think it’s too soon for me to fully commit to foldables. At least I actually tried it.
I'm still not sold on the durability and the last thing I want is the screen to become a wear item. Even with most of them pretty much all switching from plastic to ultra thin glass, bending glass like that is asking for it to eventually break and replacement internal screens aren't cheap.
Secondly, a lot of foldables sacrifice battery capacity as the Flip 5 has a 3700 MAh battery and the Fold 5 has a 4400 MAh and powering a 2nd, larger screen is going to consume more battery. A normal smartphone you can typically find with at least 5000 MAh batteries in them.
The tech is cool and all, but it just seems more like an engineering flex rather than something that's practical.
I’ve had my Galaxy zflip 3 for about 2 years now. Lots of comments here are saying they are too fragile or poorly made but that has not been my experience:
the battery is fine
the screen hasn’t scratched
it flips open fine with a one handed flick of the wrist
I’ve dropped it several times without damage
it has been used in the rain and snow
I’ve replaced the screen protector once myself due to it peeling at the fold. Having to change screen protectors happens on every phone I’ve owned due to peeling somewhere
I can drop it in my pocket folded without worrying about keys, coins, or whatever else scratching up the screen
being able to use the phone as it’s own tripod is nice for photos
flipping it shut to end phonecalls is satisfying
price is about the same as any other new Samsung phone (I got mine close to free trading in a Galaxy s10e)
The new flip 5 looks really nice with the bigger cover screen but I don’t plan to upgrade anytime soon since this phone is working well for me.
I got one, but got rid of it after the screen cover plastic became rigid and creaky…twice. Worse, Samsung said they’d cover it once under warranty, and that after their ubreak ifix people were telling me it’d cost $200 to fix and I had to explain I had a protection plan to the braindead tech ten times.
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.
Honestly, I just don’t find them very appealing, one of my coworkers has one and having the thing unfold into a shape more like a small tablet just looks like it’d make it harder to use one handed, and having a weird seam in the middle looks distracting. They look kinda cool and novel because I’m not used to seeing screens fold like that, but I don’t see myself actually preferring one once the novelty ran out.
Add comment