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.
Yeah, the price is definitely the big issue with those for me. I love the form factor (especially the ones that look like the flip phones of old), but I’m not paying triple what a regular phone with similar specs would be just for that.
Exactly this. I actually loved using the ZFold 4 when I tried it out, but losing the quality of the main cam and 10x zoom was a huge bummer for the price I was paying.
The Galaxy Note series used to have the absolute best cameras that would eventually come to the S line. If you’re going to charge a premium for a phone it needs to be the best.
It adds nothing of value. It’s just a neat gimmick. I don’t want a crease in my screen, I don’t want to double the width of my phone in my pocket, and I have no valid use cases for it.
My current phone still works, too expensive, durability concerns (my current phone would not be working were it a foldable), center crease, looks like a pain to repair (right to repair hell yeah!), and most importantly…
…why? What do I gain by going with a foldable? My current phone doesn’t need to fold to fit in my pocket, and it doesn’t have so many compromises.
My ex has one. She used it half folded to prop it up to take pictures. That’s come in handy quite a bit actually. Also I like that you can close the phone to hang up calls. Sometimes I have to navigate back to the call app to hang up and it just feels ridiculous how hanging up is a multi step process if the call app isn’t open. Lastly, pocket space, I prefer the folded phone than a full sized.
I likely won’t get one for the same reason as you.
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.
I’ve avoided the like the plague for all the obvious reasons, my mum has been using one for a few years now and ran into just about all of those reasons.
Permanant mid fold in screen.
Durability lasts far fewer actions than what was in the specs and warranty.
Refurbishing only introduced new issues and failed to resolve old issues.
The main thing stopping me is that I don’t use Android phones right now. But even if I did, I personally find the whole foldable phone thing to be a bit gimmicky. I’d want to see it have staying power over some years before I’d even consider getting one.
Add comment