I switched to Android last year, from being a long time iPhone user, just for the fold. I got the google pixel fold 9 pro. I also got lucky as it's right when all the cool AI integration started (and it sounds like it doesn't really work on Apple).
My first hand experience is that I will probably never be able to go back to a non-folding phone. The ability to get a small tablet on demand anywhere (subway, train, bed, couch, etc.) is really the next technological breakthrough we were waiting for.
I think the pricing and the battery kinda suck, android also doesn't have the same polish as iOS, but most of the criticism that I've read is not really relevant (for example, I can't see the crease at all if I look at my phone)
I use it a lot to read PDFs and watch videos, or when U want to multi task with two apps open at the same time (e.g. filling forms with a pic of my passport on the other screen). I also read mangas from it. Oh and the ability to use the back camera for selfies while being able to see myself is so great I use that all the time.
>> android also doesn't have the same polish as iOS
As someone who switched from using Android for many years to iOS for the iPhone Mini, this seems to be all about what you're used to. The lack of polish on iOS for many features, notifications and quick settings first among them, makes me crazy but not enough to deal with a huge phone. Android's had the notification shade with integrated settings since just about day one and it's a killer feature.
Riffing on a comment I saw on one of LinusTechTip's "Switch to Android/Apple" videos: phone users misinterpret familiarity with intuitiveness and polish. Android is "intuitive" to me because I've been using it more than a decade. It's "polished" because I'm blind to the rough edges.
I was really surprised when I first got an iPhone. After all the hype about it being so intuitive and polished, it was just different. Some things better, some things worse.
But Apple devices take a bit longer to go obsolete, and seem just a tiny bit less invasive as they don't rely on an advertising model for revenue.
For the few months that I had to use an iPhone in addition to my regular Android phone, I also tried to convince myself that some things were better and some things were worse.
But the iOS keyboard was completely unusable for me as a power user, and it cannot be replaced. I was missing so many features of Gboard. I absolutely could not consider an iPhone or any other replacement phone for that matter, if it does not support Gboard.
iOS must have changed some things related to keyboards. On an iPhone many years ago it was definitely a better experience. I’m not sure if some sort of predictive text gets in the way or what. Or maybe something with the spacing. Or it also seems like some sort of thread priority issue because there are times where I can distinctly tell that there’s some sort of input lag that’s messing with it.
Gboard is crippled on iOS — why can’t we just have a damn comma on the main screen?! And why can't I just get my keyboard to be at the very bottom of my screen.
Been using iPhone for years and I swear the keyboards accuracy has turned to absolute shit. I am convinced through my experience that they have definitely changed something and made it terrible. It’s making me consider getting an android cos that’s how we use our phones - with a keyboard.
I've noticed the iOS keyboard has fundamentally different tap recognition based on whether swipe typing is enabled.
It looks the same but behaves differently enough that I have a hard time believing it shares code. When I turn off swipe, my tap accuracy goes MASSIVELY up, and a lot of the autocorrect screwiness seems to abate considerably. I can go back to blind thumb typing.
That said, swipe is so useful, I’ve left it on, and I deal with the degraded tap behavior. But maybe that’s a trade-off for you to consider.
today I was texting and Google Messages began to lag.
Why DOES everything seem to get worse? I can hear the Doctorow fans coming out of the woodwork to tell me it's "enshittification" but that's a cute conspiracy theory that doesn't explain at all why Google would allow Messages to have a memory leak after working fine for years.
There's no profit motive to making a core application shittier.
We have to dig deeper, because this kind of thing is everywhere and hand waving at capitalism like Doctorow does is a cop out and an unsatisfying explanation IMHO
Why do you need to dig deeper? If you were the PM would you prioritise the fixing of the bug instead of other work that’s more important? How many customers will you actually lose?
Just checked with the iOS keyboard development guide and app store review and see no rules against it. Why are you pretty sure it is limited due to the OS?
It's pretty terrible but it's still the best of what I've tried. Given the progress in LLMs the autocomplete/autocorrect choices and word suggestions are laughably bad. Swype and the MS one though still managed to be worse
I would agree with you before Apple switched everything to gestures. Any time I now have to help a family member out on an iPhone I get extremely frustrated. Does the interface want me to swipe, long press or do something else? There are no real hints. Extremely irritating.
I miss the three physical navigation buttons that phones used to have. Yes, they took up a bit of space but they were also unambiguous about what their navigational function was.
Also just how important certain features are to you personally.
For me notifications are generally more annoying than they are useful, and this doesn’t change under Android. In fact the emphasis that Android puts on them in the shade really sucks for me because it’d much rather have the quick settings pane fully visible than room for a couple more notifications — having to swipe again to see all the toggles is super annoying. So for me, the split shade that iOS does where swiping down on the top right edge of the screen shows only your quick toggles is preferable.
Some people basically live in their notifications, though. I’ve never been able to understand it, but they do, and so the Android way works better for them.
I think there are also less subjective aspects though, like the choice of animation curves through much of Android feels “wrong” somehow and different from almost everything else else out there, including Windows, Linux desktops, etc.
Because neither the shareholders or the userbase cares about this. Apple has a captive market who accepted this limitation for over 10 years and thee won't switch to Android because of that issue.
Entification will only continue from here on both parties since they've achieved duopoly status, so as a customer you can only pick the lesser of two evils.
“Polish” is subjective. If what a platform provides aligns with your needs, it feels polished. If it doesn’t, that same “polish” can actually work against you. In other words, polish depends on how much you agree with the platform’s way of doing things.
iOS (and Apple overall) tends to be more opinionated. It says, “Do things our way and you’ll have a smooth experience.” Android, by contrast, has historically been more of a flexible “toolkit.” That gave you room to shape the platform to your liking, though it often meant less guidance and structure.
In recent years, Android has shifted toward more out-of-the-box convenience, closing some of that gap. But ultimately, it comes down to what you value: iOS offers a cohesive, guided experience, while Android gives you more leeway to adapt things if you don’t agree with the defaults. Neither approach is inherently better—it’s about what fits you.
I've been using an iPhone I got from a carrier deal for the last year after using Android phones since the T-Mobile G1, and the notification shade drives me insane on iOS. Notifications in general are so much more annoying to deal with on iOS vs Android. For the love of god please just let me clear all notifications!
Also, how Apple seems to deliberately avoid including a shortcut to the full settings anywhere in the control center or the shade. It honestly feels like one of those stubborn Apple things where at one point they decided Android including a settings shortcut (gear icon on the shade) was somehow an admission that its quick actions were poorly designed and iOS is above that.
I think these features are or can be implemented. But they are definitely not obvious. And it’s possible they weren’t there when you first used an iPhone.
To clear all, swipe down on the top left to show Notification Center. You should see an X button right of the words “Notification Center”.
If you want to launch an app from control center, open control center (swipe down from the battery icon), press and hold on a clear area until you’re able to edit it. Add a control. Scroll down until you see the Shortcuts controls and pick Open App, then pick Settings.
As someone who has an android personal phone and an iPhone for work for several years, I literally do not know what the hell people mean by "polish", beyond just the informal emotional utterance that can be translated back to "what I'm used to". Half of the stuff in the iPhone is equally arbitrary and mindboggling as the android.
I think a lot of it is just tribal mysticism. One gets used to their preferred devices, and then they mentally imbue them with positive qualities, conjured out of their own imagination/biases. There was an article[1] a while back where the author was complaining that Android apps feel "inert and rigid," and lack "comfort, fun, and panache." Like, really? How is anyone expected to compare one app's "panache" with another one's? You're just used to one ecosystem's apps, and other people are used to another ecosystem's apps.
"But for the most part, it seems like third-party Android apps don’t even try to achieve the look-and-feel comfort, fun, and panache of iOS apps."
(referring to Android Mastodon clients vs iOS Mastodon clients)
Is nobody allowed to make any subjective judgement about apps?
I just switched from a Motorola Razr+ to a OnePlus 13 because the Razr's internal display cable apparently started flaking out, probably because I dropped it on the hinge on concrete a while back. I almost got another Razr, but even though I got a "normal" phone this time around, I'm tentatively planning to move back to a foldable once my OnePlus is old and gray.
Foldables are just so nice; the flip style for me is especially convenient since it is more compact in a pocket. I also feel like we're almost to the tipping point where we can consider folding displays solved to the point that new generations start having marginal iterations (as opposed to "wow, the crease is so much smaller!" and "Oh look, they finally got foldables IP68 rated!").
How do you go back on iOS? Oh yeah it depends on which app and sometimes even where you are within one app. On android? Use the navigation bar or the same back gesture, every time all the time.
I've thought larger bi-folds have an odd aspect ratio for anything but two-app multi-tasking. E.g. there's ~ no benefit for videos compared to non-foldables with half the screen area. Is aspect ratio not an issue in practice somehow?
Here's part of the list of warnings I saw when I setup a Samsung Fold for someone else:
> Don't press the screen or under display camera with a sharp object such as a pen or fingernail. Doing so can result in scratches, dents, or damage
to the screen.
> This phone isn't dust-proof. Exposure to small particles such as sand
may cause damage.
I live close to the beach, so very often have a bit of sand in my pocket. Seems like these phones wouldn't last a weekend.
I discovered something insideous after being in the iOS ecosystem. Apple still slows down iPhones, but not in the way you think - every year around their iPhone launch schedule, like clockwork, my iPhone 14 Pro Max slowed down just enough to make me think it was ageing, but not enough to suspect - after a lot of tests, it turns out, the reponsitivity of the touch was being reduced in software. So, the "smooth" iOS polished animations feel a bit laggy, but not enough to raise eyebrows. But, this is not even the worst part. I casually - out of pure coincidence discovered that Apple actually reduces the camera's clarity around their new iPhone launches. Particularly low-light performance. I thought I was being paranoid, but I'm a photographer and the hotel I walked across everyday in the evening had these beautiful hanging creepers which combined with golden lighting, always provided a pleasant sight. So, I loved taking pictures of it randomly until one day I noticed that regardless of the camera mode, the noise was insanely high and the pictures suddenly looked like they were taken from an old Android phone from 2015. I cleaned the lenses, had no cover, etc. I copied the images to my computer and the difference was clearly visible.
You can clearly see a spike in as recent as September 2025. But, the camera data was the last straw for me. As a photographer who paid $1000+ for the iPhone Pro Max - supposedly their latest and greatest phone of the time, only to get screwed over by greed 2 years later, I had enough.
I sold the iPhone at a loss, got myself a Samsung Note and I actually took pictures of the same hotel again and the difference was stark. That really told me everything I needed to know about Apple's ethics. In contrast, I also have a Samsung S10+ from ages ago and it still functions flawlessly. The trade off clearly is privacy with the Android eco-system, but until we have a decent Apple alternative that's also privacy focused, I'm forced to accept this trade off.
Funnily enough, my iPad and Macbooks never get slowed down, even if it's 5+ years. It's only for the iPhones. I guess they view the iPhone as fast fashion or something, but the ethical component is not acceptable to me.
I dont mind iphones but with how they lock down their devices and do things like prevent you from removing keyword suggestions so when your keyboard starts harassing you, you are out of luck.and the edges are so sharp and uncomfortable to hold.
Its like wearing a thong or being locked in chastity.As a male I dont understand why people people wear those things.
So the facts we know are that 1) Samsung market share rising from 23% to 31% and 2) they recently released new foldable phones. But do we know that's the actual primary reason for the increase? I couldn't tell that from the article. The article mentions engagement of specific social media posts, but that's as much as it, without any sales number/estimates from anyone.
I heard a stat the other day in the Dithering podcast, I’m not sure from where, that said that foldable phones are something like 1.7% of the market in the US.
If that’s close it’s not why Samsung‘s market share increased so much. That was for ALL foldable phones of all brands. That wouldn’t make statistical sense.
There are people who like foldable phones. Apple does not have them. And Samsung‘s market share went up.
I doubt they are making all of the impact, but are we comparing market share of newly sold phones to market share of all in-use phones, or the podcast was talking about newly sold?
I’m not sure it qualified. I’d assume in-use. But I doubt phones that get close to $2000 are popular enough to be a large percentage of new phones either.
Better than 1.7%? Sure. Better than 5% I doubt it.
Foldable phones are selling like hot cakes outside the U.S. but I don't know about the U.S. market. Could be catching up.
Here are some things to know about folding phones
1. They're like expensive cars. Do not own one without a warranty
2. As soon as the new model comes out, swap it in
3. If you're into smaller phones, they're a good option
4. They are not for the financially conscious. Those things are kind of a status symbol
Anecdotal, but I'm seeing a lot of folding phones in public.
I look at the prices and wonder how some of the people I see with them can afford them. But using them is probably many people's favorite hobby at this point?
Most of it is your tax dollars. I have two friends who aren't officially with the mother of their kids in any way on paper so that they get as many benefits for single mothers as possible.
I see this in media all the time. Make factual statements and imply they are connected, but with zero data if they actually are. Or claim "People are doing X" without any data if a statistically relevant number are actually doing X or just the 2 people they found as an example
Just anecdotally I spent some time with older members of my family a couple months back in a hospice situation, and folding phones were very popular with everyone at the facility. If your vision isn't the best and maybe your hands aren't so steady, having double the real estate makes a big difference.
That's interesting I would think someone in a hospice (old?) would mean barely able to use technology, something basic with big buttons like a jitter bug.
Funny I saw someone who's phone was so zoomed in the letters were massive in the messaging app, I thought they mistakenly did that but it was on purpose.
It was an assisted living facility with on site medical clinic and hospice care. So it was a wide variety of people.
And yeah, being able to make the letters huge is a big deal. Also being able to dictate texts or emails was also huge for a lot of the people there. Much more convenient for them.
I just bought a 2nd hand Fold 6 for 800$ and I'm not going back to slab phones ever. Primarily because I've never done as much reading as I've done in the past month with this phone. Removal of friction here has been such a game changer when it comes to productive use of my phone - now when I would doom scroll otherwise I just unfold my phone and do a bit of reading.
The only drawback is the camera but turns out it's much easier to carry a dedicated camera (Canon g7xm3 in my case) than a dedicated reading device / tablet.
I felt this way at one point and vocally proclaimed as such on here. My Fold 5 developed a bubble under the screen protector after about 18 months. I sent it into Samsung through the website to get it repaired. Whoever "repaired" it, just seemed to slice the screen protector down the middle with an knife so it had a big ugly line down the center. Predictably, it was full of bubbles again within a week. I'm not even bothering opening it anymore for fear that it will break the inner screen. Between this and the fact that I had another two Samsung phones that developed hardware faults making them unusable after 2 years of use, I'm absolutely done with Samsung. Before that, I had an iPhone that was still going strong after 7 years. I'm preordering an iPhone tomorrow and selling the Samsung. Doubt I will be venturing into the Android ecosystem again. Might get an Apple foldable depending on what the initial reports are like on durability after it's been around for a couple of years. The time sink of having to transfer a phone across is high and I really cba with doing it because of avoidable screen repair.
>I had another two Samsung phones that developed hardware faults making them unusable after 2 years of use, I'm absolutely done with Samsung
I haven't tried any foldable phones and I have no intention to anytime soon, but with other samsung phones my experience has been completely different. I've only ever used Samsung smartphones, and the only times they broke was when I dropped them or mishandled them myself somehow. My current one is past the 6 year mark, and I have no issues with it. It still keeps 48 hours of battery with my normal use (though that might not be saying much considering my normal use is different from most people's normal use of watching videos for hours)
I had a fold 3, and now a fold 6. The screen protectors are easily replaceable yourself. It's the only weakness on the phone I've found, and a cheap ($17ish) wear item. The replacement ones I get feel much nicer and thicker than the original.
I love the replacement matte inner screen protector on my fold 4. It's so much better than the glossy screen protector and it was cheap, and easy to install.
A forced reboot error first occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 folds, and the same error repeatedly appeared at roughly every 10,000 folds afterward (e.g., around 16,000, 26,000, etc.).
Around 46,000 folds, creaking noises started coming from the hinge.
At 75,000 folds, an unknown black liquid came out of the hinge, but it has not appeared again.
At 175,000 folds, all speakers (earpiece, top, and bottom) stopped working.
The hinge has become smoother. Free-stop still works, but elasticity seems to be lost.
The reboots at 10K intervals seems like a software problem fixable by an update.
The speakers failing at 175K folds seems like the major failing point. I suppose bluetooth would probably still be working so you could still limp through day-to-day activities.
I had two friends that said the same thing and now both have iPhones. They got sick of constantly sending in their phones to be replaced for screen failures. One had a pixel other had a Samsung.
The one with a pixel final break was when he landed in Belize to start a vacation and the screen died. Entire vacation he had to borrow wife’s iPad mini to read.
Given the price and fragility of foldables, I’m happier to stick to a cheap phone with a small screen to minimise the urge to use it (second-hand iPhone 13 Mini), and carry around a Kobo for reading needs.
> I’m happier to stick to a cheap phone with a small screen to minimise the urge to use it (second-hand iPhone 13 Mini)
Me too, but this option is disappearing. As our minis reach end of life, I don't think we'll have other "small" options than foldables, unless you're willing to go for super niche android phones (eg unihertz)
Hopefully the foldables become more resilient by then
I fully expect to get 3-4 more years life out of my 13 Mini; hopefully by that point Apple will do another small(ish) phone release for people who are holding out.
Haven’t even had to replace the battery in our 13 Minis yet, so hoping as well for another 4 years. After that, I hope Apple has glued two small iPhone Airs together and made a foldable.
Yup, a friend of mine has been into folding phones for some years now, and he warned me that these foldables seem to last about two years before something happens. (He didn't quite specify what would happen, though.)
I should have noted, it doesnt look as good as a slab phone does after that period. The crease is now (at least to me) very noticable, but it does still work. I've been watching his to see if I should make the transition away from Apple back to Android haha.
I have one of the newer lowend Razrs. It wasn't that expensive, less than a base model iPhone and it actually helps me use my phone less because it takes intention to actually open it.
If you prefer to carry a dedicated camera in addition to a phone, aren't you a far outlier? To the point that one of the most common sayings in photography is "the best camera is the one you carry" (even when it's the sub-par one).
The phone camera is still very much functional but it's not newest gen Pixel. It probably matches most 2-4 year old slab phones. The slab cameras are actually very much in right now and my g7x I had for 5 years now has risen in value which basically never happened with cameras before.
I think that's really that most people don't know or don't care enough about photography. Which is fine. That's up to them. But some of us do care.
"The best camera is the one you carry" is about opportunistic capture of moments i.e. it's better to record them on anything than nothing. That doesn't always work. I've lost more moments than I gained on a smartphone camera which won't focus on what I want, does weird uncorrectable things with white balance, has a pretty nasty digital zoom, or has gunk on the lens from being handled.
That's fair. (Heading off topic:) My take on that saying is that I make art when the inspiration strikes. So I am often caught carrying a minimal amount of stuff but noticing something and wanting to play with it. My very mediocre 1st gen iPhone SE is indeed absurdly far in capabilities from my serious camera - but historically there have been far worse cameras. (And it has never been quite the same since I replaced the battery and I annoy my friends by tapping the phone so it will auto-focus.)
Exactly! To add, if I take a dedicated camera with me it feels like a side quest permission to go out there and look for actual photography targets actively rather than just wait for an opportunity. It's kinda like taking a shovel to the beach - you'll end up digging some holes just because you took it.
I also bought a 2nd hand Fold 4 for $700... it lasted a year before the wifi/bluetooth broke, it stopped folding all the way, and eventually stopped booting up.
Seem to always have reliability issues with Samsung phones. Hopefully the 6th iteration is more stable.
I'd still prefere regular phone (wouldn't mind something smaller, like 5,5" with bigger battery) and dedicated e-ink ebook reader... it's just more convenient and with it I'm guaratneed to be distraction free...
Play Books is actually really underrated! It's quite minimal, cross platform with cloud state and does everything really well. One cool unique feature I found is that it can sync notes and highlights straight to a google drive folder.
I thought the idea of a folding phone was just a cash grab until I saw someone on the plane across the aisle from me interacting with one. It has been a while since I saw someone get so much enjoyment out of a device. The back and forth between folded and unfolded to read messages and watch movies/read a book was mesmerizing. It made me realize that this form factor could actually enhance the user experience in a meaningful way.
I genuinely think book reading is the killer app for foldable devices. A bigger screen for a movie or TV is nice to have, but not a game changer. When you have that much screen real estate you can get a really enjoyable experience reading a novel or just easily read a textbook or research paper in a way that's simply not possible on even the largest of what you might consider a typical size phone.
Plus, you no longer need to deal with buying and maintaining a separate device like an iPad! This is why I suspect Apple is dragging its feet on the foldable category, besides letting the screen technology mature. It will probably cannibalize some sales from that market segment.
I find my phone much more comfortable to hold than a book. It fits my hand.
You only read one sentence at a time anyway. I rather scroll, keeping the current sentence in the middle of the screen than jump around with my eyes in an open book, and having to turn pages, or keeping them flat.
Am I missing something? (Real question. I read a lot!)
Reading PDFs is the biggest case. PDFs do not (typically) dynamically reflow in a way that's usable and generally suck to read on a small screen as a result. Source: read a lot of PDFs on mobile.
Not how I read when I read on paper & this bothers me on a phone a lot.
I'm not functionally dyslexic, but all the words pop out at the same time, you could say I read verbs, then tense, nouns after and then I read adjectives in a sentence.
But English is also my second language, so my first language's grammar probably fits closer.
Oddly enough when I first encountered lisp, the nested pile of map, fold and filter was easier because of the well trained habit of restructuring after reading verbs.
Your eyes can skip around and read a lot faster. Most things I read have me skipping around quite a bit. The only time I'm straight-linear with reading is in fiction, and for that I've moved to audiobooks.
Fair question and I read a lot on my phone too! I think the use cases that come to mind for me are comics/graphic novels and research papers. Both of these are kind of annoying to read on phones right now.
Though I agree with you that a larger reading screen would be very nice, I doubt such an experience on a device that offers endless digital distractions will reverse this downward trend - not that you said it would.
It could go both ways though. Phones get more heavy use, and foldables will probably always be more fragile than iPads, so they might wind up with more customers replacing a more expensive device more often. iPads last a really long time, which was talked about as a problem for Apple's revenue. Some day we might even get a foldable iPad.
Also I doubt that Apple's foldable phone will cost the same or less than Samsung's, as is suggested in the article...
Exactly. Apple is adding so much to iPadOS 26 (e.g. new windowing features) that it resembles the Mac. The next foldable iPhone will be like the iPadOS prior to version 26, so that Apple can make sure iPadOS remains more powerful than iOS.
Kindles and their competitors have pretty much perfected the devices for this market. They are cheap, high quality, and last long. The few people who like to read do not mind carrying a dedicated reader. However a foldable eink reader would be interesting.
For your second, I think you don’t understand why people buy/use iPads. First off, I don’t really know anyone who uses an iPad mini for anything productive (other than as a test device). A 7-9” screen is just not useful compared to a 13” iPad for things like Sidecar or reading sheet music in live performances. The 7-9” screen being an unfolded phone doesn’t change this.
A folding iPhone could eat the iPad mini, but that’s never been a cash cow for Apple or something power users cared about - it’s more of an “iPod touch” for kids. (And frankly, the Switch 2 kind of obsoletes it.) The thing that would eat 13” iPads’ lunch is something more like Apple Vision.
Weirdly enough, the iPad Mini is probably the iPad most used for work. The size & weight are perfect for many scenarios. Pilots, warehouses, and field work of all sorts.
For me personally, it's my travel machine. I've done all sorts of things with it on the road. From SSH to using Photoshop to make some last minute edits. It (barely) fits in my pockets so I don't even need a bag for it. Probably my favorite machine ever at least in terms of form factor.
Screen size does seem to be a personal choice. For me, I've always liked small screens for portability. I'm the weirdo who actually got work done on the first gen Asus EEE PC and didn't mind it. But I can understand that wouldn't be for everyone.
The iPad Mini form factor with cell connectivity is pretty great when you're travelling light.
My normal international travel load-out is a backup smart phone + an 8" LTE tablet with eSIM + bluetooth keyboard. It's about as minimal as I can get while still having a real keyboard and functional screen size to handle travel logistics.
Pilots use iPads for all of the charts and checklists. Even having two iPads (one as a backup) is much lighter and thinner (and easier to update) than the paper copies it replaces.
The big future that I see for foldables is as tablets for note takers.
Microsoft and Apple have already proven that students are willing to shell out the money to buy $1000+ products just to take hand written digital notes on. If Samsung or someone else could create a foldable that's in the ~$1500 range that can fold out into the size of an ipad mini AND has a good pen usage and storage situation, I believe it will sell incredibly well.
It'd be so cool to be able to walk to a lecture with only your phone.
I used to take notes on my Newton MessagePad back at a time when college professors would _not_ allow folks to use laptops for notetaking --- agree, in addition to folding, you pretty much need a stylus for note-taking (and for an Apple Pencil, I'd worry about the "tick" one gets each time it's touched to the screen).
That said, these days I use a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Amazon Kindle Scribe w/ Premium Pen, Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, and when at a desk, a MacBook and Wacom One display, all with Wacom EMR --- no folding devices, since there doesn't yet seem to be one which uses the normal frequencies (most recent foldables used the same frequency for the stylus as is usually used for the eraser?!?).
I'd give a lot for a competitor to the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i which used a Wacom EMR stylus, or for a phone which used a standard Wacom EMR stylus.
I’d be tempted by a foldable iPhone if (and only if) they have a stylus, but I don’t expect them to.
The form factor doesn’t lend itself to storing a comfortably sized “pencil” along with the phone, and god forbid an Apple accessory exist that doesn’t feel perfectly integrated with the product it goes with.
Multi app works pretty well too, when I need to cross reference between apps throwing them each up on the split halves is way better than swapping back and forth.
I did try one, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold for 6 months before going back to iOS (I'm too deep on the ecosystem, but I like to try Android again every once in a while).
I think I only used it unfolded like three times. It was pretty much pointless for me.
Anything I need a bigger screen for, I almost always have either my laptop or iPad with me for that. I don't WANT to do things on my phone, I actually want to use it less - a foldable offers the alternative deal, where you want to and actively use your phone for more and more tasks forgoing other devices.
It's only life changing if you use your phone for most of your computing. I don't, I tried a foldable and barely used it unfolded, just didn't "get it." If I need to do something that's frustrating on a phone screen, I don't use my phone - I almost always have my laptop with me, or my iPad near by. If I don't, it can probably wait until I get home anyway.
Consequently, probably why I might be "downgrading" from a pro max down to the new iPhone Air. No bulk, no excessive camera array...just a thin, light phone.
That's exactly my phone use. I still want a fast phone because a laggy interface will make my phone use even more annoying for the use I do have, but trying a foldable for a week or so it just felt like something clunkier to carry around in between using my tablet or desktop.
Then you got the wrong foldable phone - you should have gone for the flip - that's way smaller and more pocketable than air. Will probably get you similar battery stats.
Sounds horrible to me. Why would I want to do the extra step of flipping things open and typing in two form factors. But then I’m not really watching long form videos on my phone so maybe I’m just not the target market.
Except e.g. the 7.6" Pixel Fold screen is still only a third of the area of a 13" MacBook (not to mention a desktop).
To people (like me) who want bigger screens, your comment reads akin to "Imagine that you need to grab your phone because you need a 6" screen, now instead you can just flip out a second screen from your Apple Watch and have a 2.5" screen."
I had never seen one in the wild until I made a new friend recently, who has one of the foldable Samsung devices. My initial impression was that it is clunky, way too thick/large for comfortable pocket storage+running and it looks cheap for how much it cost... and last week my friend said he got his first ever dead pixel of any of his devices on the foldable phone. Take that opinion and info as you will.
The Fold 7, new this year, is hardly clunky. It's less than 1mm thicker than an iPhone Pro when folded and is only 4.2mm when open where it has an 8" screen. It's surprisingly un-clunky.
I know less than ten people with foldable phones, but without fail they all claim that the screen is durable, but I have yet to see any foldable phone without a cracked screen after a few years.
Screen is really good on the google folding 9. On the other hand my gf broke her iphone screen twice in one week (the second time a few days after getting an official repair...)
I've had 2 Samsung fold phones, no dead pixels. They have been perfect, and very much not "clunky". "looks cheap"? How? It's probably the most well built phone I've ever had, and I've had all the brands, even an iPhone that didn't work well (remember "you're holding it wrong"?).
Been using a flip for four years (Samsung) and will buy another when the time comes (not necessarily Samsung).
Ever wanted a smaller phone? That's a flip phone, it just happens to expand when you need it. Ever drop your phone and damage the screen ? The closed flip phone is super sturdy. Ever wanted to put your phone on the table and use it with one hand, laptop style? Flip. Even in general use, having it slightly bent towards you is a nicer experience that a fully flat phone.
Yes, it has a slight crease in the middle, it has never bothered me even a little. And now, there's an actual microcrack across the crease, doesn't really bother me either, but for some people it might. Look forward to improvements in the next generations.
I had the Flip 2, 3, and 5. I just switched to the Moto Razr Ultra and I feel like it is even better. The external screen works almost like the internal screen, making it extremely easy to use. Samsung locks down their external screen pretty hard and you need a lot of work arounds that still don't give me the same functionality as the Razr.
I also got the Clicks physical keyboard case for it, which turns it into a modern Blackberry type phone. I love it. The physical keyboard means no on-screen keyboard taking up your external screen space. I only actually open my phone a few times a day, which really helps keep doomscrolling at bay. Full discloser, the keyboard isn't perfect and definitely has some quirks and tradeoffs but on the whole I'm glad I got it.
When it goes on sale, I'm going to give it a go with the Moto Razr 2025 with the Clicks keyboard case. Closed, it looks almost exactly like an old Blackberry, but it can flip open to a normal-ish (coming from an iPhone Mini very tall) screen when needed.
Most my phones are the low end free-to-get-you-to-sign-up models.
AT&T doesn't have low end Motorolas so I bought an unlocked, guaranteed to work with AT&T, sub $300 one directly off motorola.com and took it to the AT&T store.
Low-end Android all have the same nagging adware or if they're not nagging they're definitely selling your data way more than flagships where customer UX is a priority.
>they're definitely selling your data way more than flagships where customer UX is a priority.
I'd to see some evidence for this claim. It seems to be a ridiculous offhand claim to make in this era of late stage capitalism. Flagship phones owners are wealthier, their data is more valuable for customer acquisition. Why in god's name would those penny pinchers leave that kind of money on the table? It makes no sense. It's not like flagship phone owners can track whether their data is being sold any better than low end phone owners.
They might make it harder to turn data collection off in low end phones, but that says nothing of their desire to be able to sell the data of flagship phone owners.
I bought a zfold 7 about a month ago, it has been without a doubt the coolest new device I have purchased in many years. It's unbelievably thin, if you use it in normal phone mode you can't even tell that it's a fold. I have installed so many fun apps. I downloaded Mihon which is a manga/comic reader and I've read the first 10 volumes of Berserk, it's such a great experience reading manga on the fold screen. I also got NetherSX2 which is a PS2 emulator, it's insane to me that a phone can emulate PS2 games perfectly, I played thru a good bit of Kingdom Hearts one night with a Switch controller connected via bluetooth. I also downloaded ReadEra and have read some of the Malazan fantasy series on the device. I can play Oldschool Runescape while watching YouTube videos at the same time. I have RVNC viewer and have used it to connect to a Linux system downstairs to manage one of my systems. The split keyboard on fold mode is super easy and fast to type on, I'm using it right now to send this message. The web browsing experience is great because unlike iPhone, I can have uBlock origin and desktop mode websites look great on the fold screen.
Having both a phone and tablet in your pocket is phenomenal. I don't think I can go back at this point. Apple knows this, which is imo why the rumor is the new iPhone 17 will have a fold option for a higher price. If you think it's gimmicky, you haven't tried it yet.
Samsung Folds 1-6 are kinda bad, much worse than competitors. Samsung Fold 7 is really good, so are Honor phones (V3, V5). Honor folds are sold on Amazon in Europe. Currently own V3 one, 1 year in, so far so good, feels really sturdy.
Feels like the iPhone Air is just a test run for Apple's own folding phone. If you attach two iPhone Airs with a hinge and a little extra screen to create one seamless display, and boom, there's your folding iPhone.
If you attached 2 iPhone Airs, you'd have a chonky foldable at 11.2mm getting into territory where people complained with the previous Samsung.
Samsung's current, Fold 7, is 8.9mm closed. Turns out you can actually go thinner than a thin slab like Samsung Edge (5.8mm) or iPhone Air (5.6mm) because you can move components out of one side and put them in the other, including battery. This lets Samsung build a foldable that's 4.2mm when open, meaningfully slimmer than either the Edge or Air.
My guess is Apple's book-style foldable will be ~4mm open and ~8.5mm closed and just edges out Samsung's Fold 8 when they ship next year.
the fold 7 genuinely made me want to get a foldable for the first time, was that sleek. if it wasn't for being captive to the apple ecosystem i would strongly consider it (and may do so).
i think with agentic coding now my ideal setup would be to be able to walk away and remote in from my heavy desktop/laptop w/ just my phone and check in on stuff and do some light work, etc.
obviously i would still have my laptop but i wouldn't have to lug it around everywhere.
Personally I think they're ugly. They might have some functional advantage, that I don't know. I believe they're going to be the cyber truck of mobile phones, primarily a status symbol.
Yes but it's not ugly in the look/fashion sense, it's just ugly because it doesn't match a reality where it has a purpose.
Either they have good form factor closed but they suck open or they have good form factor open but they suck closed.
They could go with no external screen but it would be much more annoying to use. And I think it says something fundamental about smartphones, that Steve Jobs intuitively understood: it's a good tool when you can pull it out of your pocket and use it in seconds (preferably one-handed when possible).
Having a bigger screen but that needs to be unfolded doesn't add any benefits to this primary need and ends up requiring a lot of compromises (weight/volume, compromising pocket ability) for uses cases that are infrequent and would be better served by a typical table anyway. Funnily enough, in those situations you are quite likely to have the bag to carry this solution so the foldable phone becomes moot.
To make things worse, they are ridiculously expensive, often more than what it would cost to buy both an equivalent phone and tablet, which is at the same time stupid and genius.
And yes, this is precisely why they are a social status thing. You have to be quite affluent to buy something so practically stupid, you are basically burning cash.
I find folding phones interesting for what they so aptly demonstrate about life in general: no matter how hard you try, you can't have it both ways.
I'll say this: I live in France and when Apple announced the first iPhone, I imported it from the US at great costs. So, it's not like if I am a luddite, I'm just able to understand what's good and useful while you may not.
The iPhone was released nearly 20 years ago. This would be like someone in 2007 bragging that they aren't a Luddite because they bought windows 1.0 when it came out.
What are you even saying? It's funny you think I'm bragging.
Here is the thing, people are buying foldables only to show off, the functionality/usefulness makes no sense for the vast majority of people. Which is why they are still expensive and it will stay that way.
Even tech reviewers with infinite choices and zero affordability issues are not using them. If they were any good, they would be using them daily, but it's not the case.
What I'm saying about the first iPhone is that it was good and useful on release day, even though it was a flawed product missing many things that would only come later. And the cost wasn't a problem.
We have had many generations of foldables with improvement/refinements everywhere and they are still nowhere close to being ubiquitous or mainstream.
At its 4th generation, Apple was selling 50 million iPhones globally even though it was one of the most expensive phones you could buy.
We are in the 6th or 7th generation of foldable and they are not reaching anywhere near those numbers. Even if the price would come close to a regular smartphone it's doubtful that most would pay up because there are other compromises.
Fundamentally, foldables are niche products for tech geeks or people who like to show off, they will stay niche, just like VR and 3D before them.
I have been right on both of those before, do you want to make a bet?
That's the thing, all phones are ugly, but folding phones bring such life improvements that nobody seems to care.
I bought mine because it's useful, it's weird to read that someone would think that it's a status symbol. Are noise canceling headphones a status symbol too for you?
Noise cancelling is a feature and useful. Airpods? Annoying, I can't tell if the person on the sidewalk is trippin' or talking to someone on the phone via their difficult to see airpods.
I mean who cares that much what their metal slab looks like? I jest because I know lots of people do, but it really should be a thing primarily for function. I'd like a foldable if it had as nice cameras as my current phone.
If you make a lot of selfies then the camera is actually better.
When making selfies on a regular phone, you use the front-facing camera which is often sub-par. But with the Samsung Folds, you use the main camera for selfies (you flip open the phone, and see the viewfinder on the outside screen).
For me, it's the first true upgrade in the design of a phone in a long time. It's not a slightly better CPU or battery, but a different way to work with this key device in my life. I think it will be the default phone format in ~5 years, especially for younger people.
Do you actually mean "flip"? Because when open, with the screen opened upwards, they have roughly the same dimensions as any modern slab phone. Then it'd come down to whether your hand is big enough to type one-handed on that formfactor (a few women, some men).
If you mean "fold", then probably only while closed, subject to the same hand-size limits. While open, with the screen opened to the left, like a book, they're quite a bit wider than even the largest human hand could reasonably type on.
I've had a flip 3 and flip 5 which both had screen and hinge problems within a year. I love the form factor but just don't take it to the beach.
My flip 5 inner screen is currently unusable so I'm stuck using the small square cover screen which I'm enjoying quite a bit too. I don't know if my next phone should be a flip phone or a small phone, but nothing gets as small or as good hardware as the front cover of these flip phones, vs other small phones
I responded in another thread about the iPhone Air that I wanted something from Apple that's smaller than my current iPhone 13 mini. There are at least two of us!
Samsung is no longer leading the pack for folding. They refuse to innovate; Fold 7 is almost identical to Fold 4. Cameras are sub-par and they removed pen support. Meanwhile Honor Magic V5 has pen support on both screens, top of the range cameras, silicon-carbide batteries, and is 4.1mm thick unfolded!
Almost identical? The Fold 4 was 14.2mm thick and weighed 263g while the Fold 7 is 8.9mm and weighs 215g.
The Z Fold 4 feels like two flagships stacked in your pocket. The Fold 7 is lighter than an iPhone Pro max and only a vinyl sticker thicker. It feels identical to a flagship in your pocket but it's got an 8" screen. Not innovative? Where's Apple's innovation toward an 8" smartphone?
Yes, it's 30% thinner... it still has no innovation with cameras, new battery technology, and removal of pen support? I am not comparing it to apple, I'm comparing it to Honor, OnePlus/Vivo, Xiaomi - China has far more development in the folding phone sector at the moment. Their phones have been consistently thinner and lighter and Samsung is only just beginning to catch up.
Apple are in a bind here since the bend/crease will degrade over time. Other manufacturers get a pass on this sort of stuff (just look at Pixel phones not making emergency calls for a prime example), but apple will be hit with fines and class action lawsuits.
Apple sometimes manages to wait out bad ideas: they never gave into the bad idea of touchscreen "convertible" laptops, just conceding the touch bar which is now extinct.
IMO the touchbar was the least-bad thing about my touchbar 2017 MBP. The butterfly keyboard, flexgate, the USB-C ports that lost their ability to retain cables after like 20 insertions, and the overheating and quickly-degrading battery were much bigger issues.
I didn't really get much value out of the touchbar (never really used any per-app touchbar functionality), but it was mostly fine -- I adjusted to the touchbar escape key pretty quickly.
I wasn't trying to be generous. I was making a nod toward something like malicious compliance. I used to have a big old Mercedes sedan that had the worst cupholder in automotive history that would break as soon as possible. It was designed to pop out of a slot in the center console. But real German car drivers finish their coffee before stepping into the car. That's how I see the touch bar. It was meant to be awful.
They never got any significant fine for bendgate, "you're holding it wrong", problematic butterfly keyboards or secretly slowing down iphones due to degraded batteries.
They got lawsuits because they purposely chose a battery that would not be sufficient after a few years of use because they wanted a thin phone, and instead of copping to that and providing support for users to cheaply and easily replace such underspecced batteries, they silently updated their OS to just throttle itself to death to "fix" it.
These batteries were not fit for purpose. The phone design was defective. It literally could not manage after normal and expected degradation.
Imagine if, after Microsoft failed to build the Xbox 360 correctly, they just silently throttled all the machines to reduce the chance they would fail, rather than what they had to do, which was replace all the defective machines, 25% of the fleet, on their own dime.
In most countries that aren't the USA, consumers have a right to expect their products to work for some time and be fit for purpose. Apple blatantly violated that right, and used a quiet software update to hide that.
Apple loves to just deny and ignore their design failures. It used to be the norm for Macbooks to just cook their GPU to death, and apple would always refuse to acknowledge such things until they settled the lawsuit and quietly put up some sort of "we will fix this at your expense" program.
I was sceptical about this for factor seeing as it seemed like a gimmicky throwback to the early to mid 2000s.
But honestly, now that I've played around with Samsungs offerings I get it. Back in the day phones had quite a bit of personality, and Samsung really nailed that aspect.
The newest thin fold looks amazing but I can't justify a $2K phone idk maybe I'm just poor. Like I used to want a Lamborghini Aventador but now I just want a Lotus Exige. $300K seems too much too me but again is it a poor/mindset thing. I think a land would be better use of that money.
Mindset as in levels... I used to be afraid of my $30K student debt while I was in school thinking getting an engineering job that pays $60K would be great but now I make more than that and my debt is also beyond $30K so yeah levels.
lol, what is going on inside this comment, you're like whiplashing between having preferences and explaining why you should want fancy things but then actually you don't.
like... it's completely okay to not want something expensive not because you're poor but because you just don't want to spend money on it; your preferences for what's worth money to you don't have to be justified to anyone else. Except for maybe your family.
Personally I don't have any desire to buy any of those expensive things at all, because I don't even notice their existence, but that's just me. Seems better to be minimalistic. Similarly, to not have any debt, because why would you want to be more stressed and tied to a job than the minimum possible? But maybe it's different if your friends / social circle cares about shiny things or something.
The car thing I like driving fast/sporty cars, cheapest one for performance would be an older Corvette but yeah (not saying Lambo is performance, that one it's the looks, Exige though is both though different eg. acceleration/curve handling vs. top speed).
I'm just saying, there was a guy I was talking to who owned a Lambo and he's like "if it went up in flames I'd be fine", it's like I have to get to that headspace or maybe I'm not built that way not sure
But yeah I do go back and forward between wanting things/feeling guilty for being better off than others
It sounds like you're trying to feel what you're supposed to feel according to other people, and then feeling anxious about that's not how you actually feel? which sounds hard. I'm pretty sure the only way to be that makes any sense, however, is to feel what you actually feel, and if someone tries to make that seem wrong or bad, tell them (mentally or out loud) to fuck off. It's not possible to force yourself to feel differently than you feel--that's, like, what a feeling is. If something makes you think you should modify your feelings, it's wrong, like it's a complete category error; you can only react to them, not will them to change.
Not that I don't fall in the same trap, but, y'know, it's an aspiration.
and personally I'd judge the hell out of someone who owned a lambo and didn't care about it going up in flames. We get it, they want people to think they're so rich that they don't care about their own possessions. All I hear is a person try to say certain things in order to make you find them impressive.
If we look at Q3 and Q4 sales, I bet it shows Apple increasing its share of phones shipped.
Comparing one company’s share in a quarter where they launch new devices to another company’s share when that company launched no new devices is, frankly, stupid.
I have got Samsung S25 Edge which is essentially Samsung's version of iPhone 17 Air few months ago.
Only thing (software wise) which has really been showed down my throat is Bixby and Gemini. No I don't want your stupid AI, get deleted. Other than that, I can't complain about anything.
I'm curious how quickly that trend will reverse when Google fulfills their promise to lock down sideloading on android.
Samsung makes nice hardware, but their bloatware is infuriating. I spend a lot of time on every new device, using ADB to purge as many samsung apps as I can. I'm getting tired of doing it.
Once I can't sideload anymore on android, my next phone will be an iphone.
The trend, if there is one, will be effected in no measurable way when a few nerds bail because they can't remove Samsung's browser.
By the way, outside of core phone features like Phone (dialer,) Settings, Camera, etc. you can disable or uninstall everything else without sideloading anything.
Foldables are a fad. Yeah, you can doomscroll with a bigger screen, but having to baby it? Also foldables, even when folded are bulkier. For whatever usecases for foldables, a tablet is more suitable.
Believe it or not people use phones for different purposes. Some people carry phones in bags or purses where space not a not a big concern. Some people use their phones for work and a bigger screen is helpful in the process and for multitasking. Some people aren't rough with their phones either.
A fad doesn't last this long. We are on year 7 of foldables available in the mainstream and sales and production are only increasing. Every major OEM has at least foldable or is releasing one soon. 3D TV's were fully dead in 7 years for context.
I hope the iPhone Air is successful. Folding phones seems so obviously a gimmick. A year from now many of these relatively affordable folding phones will be e-trash, and social media will be full of complaints and retrospective wisdom about how they could never have been reliable. But consumer product offerings are full of gimmicks. Apple is trying not to give into herd mentality.
This but unironically. The funniest product in Apple's lineup right now, bar none, is the iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard. Apple spent 15 years refining their replacement for the laptop, and it's a touchscreen laptop that runs less software.
You'd think that Apple would stop themselves after reinventing the 2013 Microsoft Surface. Then they reprised Hololens with Vision Pro - how was nobody paying attention to Microsoft's failures at Cupertino?
Apple is probably baffled as to why 10 generations of foldable by the competition my set them back some. I guarantee one day Apple will figure out how to put touch in a laptop and it will be world changing </s> I can’t name a single real iPhone innovation in a decade.
I'll be totally honest, I do not get the appeal of foldable phones, at least with the designs I've seen so far.
I guess you can unfold it to get a bigger 2-part screen? That's about it?
I'd imagine that having it be un-foldable compromises the battery life, overall thickness (when folded) and weight to at least some extent - plus it costs way more. Is the additional screen real-estate really worth that?
If your eyes are young and you only use the phone alone. If you are older you need reading glasses for small screens. If you are showing a video to someone else you need a larger screen to see detail.
of course not knowing you or your uses I can't say if any of this should matter to you. Still it seems like a nice idia not a fad. Only time will tell if people really want it once the fad is over.
> it be un-foldable compromises the battery life, overall thickness (when folded) and weight to at least some extent
Not as much as you would think.
The Galaxy Fold 7 has a 6.5" outer screen (as compared to 6.3" screen in the iPhone 16 pro), is 8.9mm thick when folded (8.25mm in the iPhone 16 pro), has a 4400mAh battery (3,582 mAh in the iPhone 16 pro), and weighs 215g (199 grams for the iPhone 16 pro).
> plus it costs way more
The big downsides are price of $1999 launch price as compared to $999 launch price for the iphone 16 pro and durability. For durability, the foldable screens seem to be very soft making it easy to damage, say with a thumbnail.
My mom and uncles all use extremely large font sizes, they’re barely able to see a whole text at once and they check pictures by traversing them while highly zoomed.
It doesn’t appeal to me either, but I’ve often heard “functionality, taken to an extreme, becomes fashion”. I think that might be what’s happening here. There are _some_ cases in which you might want a foldable phone. But even if you don’t need it, a (good) foldable phone becomes a status symbol.
See also: expensive mechanical watches, sports cars, bottles that hold temperature for 24 hours
It's funny now that Apple is speculated to have a foldable phone on the drawing board, I can hear in real time all the tech "journalists" swinging their viewpoints around from considering it a joke to saying what a good idea it is and how they can't wait for it. Some of them already talking like Apple invented it, before they even have a product. Seems like Apple still has the reality distortion field.
I switched to Android last year, from being a long time iPhone user, just for the fold. I got the google pixel fold 9 pro. I also got lucky as it's right when all the cool AI integration started (and it sounds like it doesn't really work on Apple).
My first hand experience is that I will probably never be able to go back to a non-folding phone. The ability to get a small tablet on demand anywhere (subway, train, bed, couch, etc.) is really the next technological breakthrough we were waiting for.
I think the pricing and the battery kinda suck, android also doesn't have the same polish as iOS, but most of the criticism that I've read is not really relevant (for example, I can't see the crease at all if I look at my phone)
I use it a lot to read PDFs and watch videos, or when U want to multi task with two apps open at the same time (e.g. filling forms with a pic of my passport on the other screen). I also read mangas from it. Oh and the ability to use the back camera for selfies while being able to see myself is so great I use that all the time.
>> android also doesn't have the same polish as iOS
As someone who switched from using Android for many years to iOS for the iPhone Mini, this seems to be all about what you're used to. The lack of polish on iOS for many features, notifications and quick settings first among them, makes me crazy but not enough to deal with a huge phone. Android's had the notification shade with integrated settings since just about day one and it's a killer feature.
Riffing on a comment I saw on one of LinusTechTip's "Switch to Android/Apple" videos: phone users misinterpret familiarity with intuitiveness and polish. Android is "intuitive" to me because I've been using it more than a decade. It's "polished" because I'm blind to the rough edges.
I was really surprised when I first got an iPhone. After all the hype about it being so intuitive and polished, it was just different. Some things better, some things worse.
But Apple devices take a bit longer to go obsolete, and seem just a tiny bit less invasive as they don't rely on an advertising model for revenue.
For the few months that I had to use an iPhone in addition to my regular Android phone, I also tried to convince myself that some things were better and some things were worse.
But the iOS keyboard was completely unusable for me as a power user, and it cannot be replaced. I was missing so many features of Gboard. I absolutely could not consider an iPhone or any other replacement phone for that matter, if it does not support Gboard.
iOS must have changed some things related to keyboards. On an iPhone many years ago it was definitely a better experience. I’m not sure if some sort of predictive text gets in the way or what. Or maybe something with the spacing. Or it also seems like some sort of thread priority issue because there are times where I can distinctly tell that there’s some sort of input lag that’s messing with it.
Gboard is crippled on iOS — why can’t we just have a damn comma on the main screen?! And why can't I just get my keyboard to be at the very bottom of my screen.
It's 2025 and we have gone so far backward.
Same here.
The iOS keyboard puts absolute gibberish in there in ways it never did for me before.
The Apple AI predictive text seems strictly worse.
Been using iPhone for years and I swear the keyboards accuracy has turned to absolute shit. I am convinced through my experience that they have definitely changed something and made it terrible. It’s making me consider getting an android cos that’s how we use our phones - with a keyboard.
I've noticed the iOS keyboard has fundamentally different tap recognition based on whether swipe typing is enabled.
It looks the same but behaves differently enough that I have a hard time believing it shares code. When I turn off swipe, my tap accuracy goes MASSIVELY up, and a lot of the autocorrect screwiness seems to abate considerably. I can go back to blind thumb typing.
That said, swipe is so useful, I’ve left it on, and I deal with the degraded tap behavior. But maybe that’s a trade-off for you to consider.
Oh and it's distinctly worse on the iOS 26 beta. Certain text boxes (like HN) are a nightmare.
I used to smoothly type without looking on iOS. It was like magic. Now, it's just a mess. I think gboard on Android is the current top experience.
FOSS heliboard is a strong competitor to Gboard.
I'll check out out, thank you.
Alas, I don't think it's available on iOS.
today I was texting and Google Messages began to lag.
Why DOES everything seem to get worse? I can hear the Doctorow fans coming out of the woodwork to tell me it's "enshittification" but that's a cute conspiracy theory that doesn't explain at all why Google would allow Messages to have a memory leak after working fine for years.
There's no profit motive to making a core application shittier.
We have to dig deeper, because this kind of thing is everywhere and hand waving at capitalism like Doctorow does is a cop out and an unsatisfying explanation IMHO
Why do you need to dig deeper? If you were the PM would you prioritise the fixing of the bug instead of other work that’s more important? How many customers will you actually lose?
Because random performance bugs are a giant pain to even detect, let alone root cause.
You’ve been able to replace the iOS keyboard for almost a decade - including with Google’s
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1...
You can install gboard on iPhones, I've been using it for several years on one.
It's crippled though. You can't do something simple like have the comma on main view.
Is that an iPhone restriction or is that Google not maintaining a product?
Pretty sure it's limited due to iOS. Because it does allow period to be added.
Just checked with the iOS keyboard development guide and app store review and see no rules against it. Why are you pretty sure it is limited due to the OS?
Interesting that it hasn’t been updated in three years.
It's pretty terrible but it's still the best of what I've tried. Given the progress in LLMs the autocomplete/autocorrect choices and word suggestions are laughably bad. Swype and the MS one though still managed to be worse
It’s gotten worse. 6 and earlier, it was uniquely friendly and approachable.
I would agree with you before Apple switched everything to gestures. Any time I now have to help a family member out on an iPhone I get extremely frustrated. Does the interface want me to swipe, long press or do something else? There are no real hints. Extremely irritating.
I miss the three physical navigation buttons that phones used to have. Yes, they took up a bit of space but they were also unambiguous about what their navigational function was.
Also just how important certain features are to you personally.
For me notifications are generally more annoying than they are useful, and this doesn’t change under Android. In fact the emphasis that Android puts on them in the shade really sucks for me because it’d much rather have the quick settings pane fully visible than room for a couple more notifications — having to swipe again to see all the toggles is super annoying. So for me, the split shade that iOS does where swiping down on the top right edge of the screen shows only your quick toggles is preferable.
Some people basically live in their notifications, though. I’ve never been able to understand it, but they do, and so the Android way works better for them.
I think there are also less subjective aspects though, like the choice of animation curves through much of Android feels “wrong” somehow and different from almost everything else else out there, including Windows, Linux desktops, etc.
> So for me, the split shade that iOS does where swiping down on the top right edge of the screen shows only your quick toggles is preferable.
Just FYI, on Samsung Android Devices this is implemented as you describe.
Useless info: I think the feature was first implemented on Android 3 (Honeycomb) but then abandoned again on Android 4 (ICS)
One UI borrows a number of things from iOS so I’m not surprised. It really should be an option in base AOSP (and thus most Android installs) though.
Why are notifications on iOS such a nightmare? It’s impossible to properly read just a selection or to quickly dismiss many at once.
Because neither the shareholders or the userbase cares about this. Apple has a captive market who accepted this limitation for over 10 years and thee won't switch to Android because of that issue.
Entification will only continue from here on both parties since they've achieved duopoly status, so as a customer you can only pick the lesser of two evils.
“Polish” is subjective. If what a platform provides aligns with your needs, it feels polished. If it doesn’t, that same “polish” can actually work against you. In other words, polish depends on how much you agree with the platform’s way of doing things.
iOS (and Apple overall) tends to be more opinionated. It says, “Do things our way and you’ll have a smooth experience.” Android, by contrast, has historically been more of a flexible “toolkit.” That gave you room to shape the platform to your liking, though it often meant less guidance and structure.
In recent years, Android has shifted toward more out-of-the-box convenience, closing some of that gap. But ultimately, it comes down to what you value: iOS offers a cohesive, guided experience, while Android gives you more leeway to adapt things if you don’t agree with the defaults. Neither approach is inherently better—it’s about what fits you.
I've been using an iPhone I got from a carrier deal for the last year after using Android phones since the T-Mobile G1, and the notification shade drives me insane on iOS. Notifications in general are so much more annoying to deal with on iOS vs Android. For the love of god please just let me clear all notifications!
Also, how Apple seems to deliberately avoid including a shortcut to the full settings anywhere in the control center or the shade. It honestly feels like one of those stubborn Apple things where at one point they decided Android including a settings shortcut (gear icon on the shade) was somehow an admission that its quick actions were poorly designed and iOS is above that.
I think these features are or can be implemented. But they are definitely not obvious. And it’s possible they weren’t there when you first used an iPhone.
To clear all, swipe down on the top left to show Notification Center. You should see an X button right of the words “Notification Center”.
If you want to launch an app from control center, open control center (swipe down from the battery icon), press and hold on a clear area until you’re able to edit it. Add a control. Scroll down until you see the Shortcuts controls and pick Open App, then pick Settings.
As someone who has an android personal phone and an iPhone for work for several years, I literally do not know what the hell people mean by "polish", beyond just the informal emotional utterance that can be translated back to "what I'm used to". Half of the stuff in the iPhone is equally arbitrary and mindboggling as the android.
I think a lot of it is just tribal mysticism. One gets used to their preferred devices, and then they mentally imbue them with positive qualities, conjured out of their own imagination/biases. There was an article[1] a while back where the author was complaining that Android apps feel "inert and rigid," and lack "comfort, fun, and panache." Like, really? How is anyone expected to compare one app's "panache" with another one's? You're just used to one ecosystem's apps, and other people are used to another ecosystem's apps.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34611552
I looked at that link and the quote was:
"But for the most part, it seems like third-party Android apps don’t even try to achieve the look-and-feel comfort, fun, and panache of iOS apps." (referring to Android Mastodon clients vs iOS Mastodon clients)
Is nobody allowed to make any subjective judgement about apps?
I just switched from a Motorola Razr+ to a OnePlus 13 because the Razr's internal display cable apparently started flaking out, probably because I dropped it on the hinge on concrete a while back. I almost got another Razr, but even though I got a "normal" phone this time around, I'm tentatively planning to move back to a foldable once my OnePlus is old and gray.
Foldables are just so nice; the flip style for me is especially convenient since it is more compact in a pocket. I also feel like we're almost to the tipping point where we can consider folding displays solved to the point that new generations start having marginal iterations (as opposed to "wow, the crease is so much smaller!" and "Oh look, they finally got foldables IP68 rated!").
Doesn't have the same polish? Are you kidding me.
How do you go back on iOS? Oh yeah it depends on which app and sometimes even where you are within one app. On android? Use the navigation bar or the same back gesture, every time all the time.
I never ever had a problem of not being sure how to go back in an iOS app, so I don't see why a dedicated button is such a missing feature.
Polish is also about visual consistency and Android is behind on that front.
I've thought larger bi-folds have an odd aspect ratio for anything but two-app multi-tasking. E.g. there's ~ no benefit for videos compared to non-foldables with half the screen area. Is aspect ratio not an issue in practice somehow?
It's a great aspect ratio for reading or writing.
And it does increase the size of videos somewhat, compared to using the outer screen in landscape orientation.
How has the reliability been?
Here's part of the list of warnings I saw when I setup a Samsung Fold for someone else:
> Don't press the screen or under display camera with a sharp object such as a pen or fingernail. Doing so can result in scratches, dents, or damage to the screen.
> This phone isn't dust-proof. Exposure to small particles such as sand may cause damage.
I live close to the beach, so very often have a bit of sand in my pocket. Seems like these phones wouldn't last a weekend.
I discovered something insideous after being in the iOS ecosystem. Apple still slows down iPhones, but not in the way you think - every year around their iPhone launch schedule, like clockwork, my iPhone 14 Pro Max slowed down just enough to make me think it was ageing, but not enough to suspect - after a lot of tests, it turns out, the reponsitivity of the touch was being reduced in software. So, the "smooth" iOS polished animations feel a bit laggy, but not enough to raise eyebrows. But, this is not even the worst part. I casually - out of pure coincidence discovered that Apple actually reduces the camera's clarity around their new iPhone launches. Particularly low-light performance. I thought I was being paranoid, but I'm a photographer and the hotel I walked across everyday in the evening had these beautiful hanging creepers which combined with golden lighting, always provided a pleasant sight. So, I loved taking pictures of it randomly until one day I noticed that regardless of the camera mode, the noise was insanely high and the pictures suddenly looked like they were taken from an old Android phone from 2015. I cleaned the lenses, had no cover, etc. I copied the images to my computer and the difference was clearly visible.
After a little bit digging, it turns out, I wasn't the only one. A lot of people had complained about the lagginess around iPhone launch dates. This is an old graph from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
This is actual data from Google trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%2...
You can clearly see a spike in as recent as September 2025. But, the camera data was the last straw for me. As a photographer who paid $1000+ for the iPhone Pro Max - supposedly their latest and greatest phone of the time, only to get screwed over by greed 2 years later, I had enough.
I sold the iPhone at a loss, got myself a Samsung Note and I actually took pictures of the same hotel again and the difference was stark. That really told me everything I needed to know about Apple's ethics. In contrast, I also have a Samsung S10+ from ages ago and it still functions flawlessly. The trade off clearly is privacy with the Android eco-system, but until we have a decent Apple alternative that's also privacy focused, I'm forced to accept this trade off.
Funnily enough, my iPad and Macbooks never get slowed down, even if it's 5+ years. It's only for the iPhones. I guess they view the iPhone as fast fashion or something, but the ethical component is not acceptable to me.
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I dont mind iphones but with how they lock down their devices and do things like prevent you from removing keyword suggestions so when your keyboard starts harassing you, you are out of luck.and the edges are so sharp and uncomfortable to hold.
Its like wearing a thong or being locked in chastity.As a male I dont understand why people people wear those things.
So the facts we know are that 1) Samsung market share rising from 23% to 31% and 2) they recently released new foldable phones. But do we know that's the actual primary reason for the increase? I couldn't tell that from the article. The article mentions engagement of specific social media posts, but that's as much as it, without any sales number/estimates from anyone.
I heard a stat the other day in the Dithering podcast, I’m not sure from where, that said that foldable phones are something like 1.7% of the market in the US.
If that’s close it’s not why Samsung‘s market share increased so much. That was for ALL foldable phones of all brands. That wouldn’t make statistical sense.
There are people who like foldable phones. Apple does not have them. And Samsung‘s market share went up.
Thats all we know. The rest is a catchy headline.
I doubt they are making all of the impact, but are we comparing market share of newly sold phones to market share of all in-use phones, or the podcast was talking about newly sold?
I’m not sure it qualified. I’d assume in-use. But I doubt phones that get close to $2000 are popular enough to be a large percentage of new phones either.
Better than 1.7%? Sure. Better than 5% I doubt it.
Foldable phones are selling like hot cakes outside the U.S. but I don't know about the U.S. market. Could be catching up.
> 3. If you're into smaller phones, they're a good option
Curious to hear more about this. I don't mind thickness so much. How small are they? If I can get a decent phone with a <= 5" screen, I'd be ecstatic.
What I meant was using the outer screen while folded (e.g. Z Flip models)
Oh that does look interesting! https://phonesized.com/compare/#2715,1863
May have to get my hands on one some time and see how it feels.
Anecdotal, but I'm seeing a lot of folding phones in public.
I look at the prices and wonder how some of the people I see with them can afford them. But using them is probably many people's favorite hobby at this point?
Most of it is your tax dollars. I have two friends who aren't officially with the mother of their kids in any way on paper so that they get as many benefits for single mothers as possible.
I see this in media all the time. Make factual statements and imply they are connected, but with zero data if they actually are. Or claim "People are doing X" without any data if a statistically relevant number are actually doing X or just the 2 people they found as an example
Just anecdotally I spent some time with older members of my family a couple months back in a hospice situation, and folding phones were very popular with everyone at the facility. If your vision isn't the best and maybe your hands aren't so steady, having double the real estate makes a big difference.
That's interesting I would think someone in a hospice (old?) would mean barely able to use technology, something basic with big buttons like a jitter bug.
Funny I saw someone who's phone was so zoomed in the letters were massive in the messaging app, I thought they mistakenly did that but it was on purpose.
It was an assisted living facility with on site medical clinic and hospice care. So it was a wide variety of people.
And yeah, being able to make the letters huge is a big deal. Also being able to dictate texts or emails was also huge for a lot of the people there. Much more convenient for them.
We don't, but can extrapolate:
[1] Reviewer comparison: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45209164
[2] Specs: iPhone Air: 5.64mm, 165g vs. Samsung Edge: 5.8mm, 163g, 200MP camera, stereo, larger battery
https://www.facebook.com/theapplehubofficial/posts/galaxy-s2...
[3] Demand by young man: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44678489
I just bought a 2nd hand Fold 6 for 800$ and I'm not going back to slab phones ever. Primarily because I've never done as much reading as I've done in the past month with this phone. Removal of friction here has been such a game changer when it comes to productive use of my phone - now when I would doom scroll otherwise I just unfold my phone and do a bit of reading.
The only drawback is the camera but turns out it's much easier to carry a dedicated camera (Canon g7xm3 in my case) than a dedicated reading device / tablet.
I felt this way at one point and vocally proclaimed as such on here. My Fold 5 developed a bubble under the screen protector after about 18 months. I sent it into Samsung through the website to get it repaired. Whoever "repaired" it, just seemed to slice the screen protector down the middle with an knife so it had a big ugly line down the center. Predictably, it was full of bubbles again within a week. I'm not even bothering opening it anymore for fear that it will break the inner screen. Between this and the fact that I had another two Samsung phones that developed hardware faults making them unusable after 2 years of use, I'm absolutely done with Samsung. Before that, I had an iPhone that was still going strong after 7 years. I'm preordering an iPhone tomorrow and selling the Samsung. Doubt I will be venturing into the Android ecosystem again. Might get an Apple foldable depending on what the initial reports are like on durability after it's been around for a couple of years. The time sink of having to transfer a phone across is high and I really cba with doing it because of avoidable screen repair.
>I had another two Samsung phones that developed hardware faults making them unusable after 2 years of use, I'm absolutely done with Samsung
I haven't tried any foldable phones and I have no intention to anytime soon, but with other samsung phones my experience has been completely different. I've only ever used Samsung smartphones, and the only times they broke was when I dropped them or mishandled them myself somehow. My current one is past the 6 year mark, and I have no issues with it. It still keeps 48 hours of battery with my normal use (though that might not be saying much considering my normal use is different from most people's normal use of watching videos for hours)
I had a fold 3, and now a fold 6. The screen protectors are easily replaceable yourself. It's the only weakness on the phone I've found, and a cheap ($17ish) wear item. The replacement ones I get feel much nicer and thicker than the original.
Samsung literally tells you not to replace the inner screen protector yourself.
And the FDA tells you not to cook your steak rare.
Rare stake is fine; it's rare burgers that are a risk, because bacteria can get ground into them.
That's not completely true. The FDA rules are an oversimplification because the actual rules are complicated.
Chris Young has a video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbaZpJ1AhFU
I love the replacement matte inner screen protector on my fold 4. It's so much better than the glossy screen protector and it was cheap, and easy to install.
yeah I had my samsung phone brick after three years. Not sure I trust samsung hardware either.
There's a video out there of a bunch of guys flipping Samsung phones all day long. It starts failing after about 6k flips.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MPPLhYDnkFA&t=1s&pp=2AEBkAIB
FTV, main issues from the fold test:
The reboots at 10K intervals seems like a software problem fixable by an update.The speakers failing at 175K folds seems like the major failing point. I suppose bluetooth would probably still be working so you could still limp through day-to-day activities.
To be fair, 175K folds is like folding it once every 5 minutes for every waking hour of the day for two and a half years.
I had two friends that said the same thing and now both have iPhones. They got sick of constantly sending in their phones to be replaced for screen failures. One had a pixel other had a Samsung.
The one with a pixel final break was when he landed in Belize to start a vacation and the screen died. Entire vacation he had to borrow wife’s iPad mini to read.
Given the price and fragility of foldables, I’m happier to stick to a cheap phone with a small screen to minimise the urge to use it (second-hand iPhone 13 Mini), and carry around a Kobo for reading needs.
> I’m happier to stick to a cheap phone with a small screen to minimise the urge to use it (second-hand iPhone 13 Mini)
Me too, but this option is disappearing. As our minis reach end of life, I don't think we'll have other "small" options than foldables, unless you're willing to go for super niche android phones (eg unihertz)
Hopefully the foldables become more resilient by then
I fully expect to get 3-4 more years life out of my 13 Mini; hopefully by that point Apple will do another small(ish) phone release for people who are holding out.
Haven’t even had to replace the battery in our 13 Minis yet, so hoping as well for another 4 years. After that, I hope Apple has glued two small iPhone Airs together and made a foldable.
The fragility is mostly a myth. New foldables are very durable.
Yup, a friend of mine has been into folding phones for some years now, and he warned me that these foldables seem to last about two years before something happens. (He didn't quite specify what would happen, though.)
I got a friend on a fold going on four years now, it's fine. Milage varies I suppose.
I have a friend that doesn't have a foldable phone. I'm skeptical such phones even exist.
Good to know, thanks!
I should have noted, it doesnt look as good as a slab phone does after that period. The crease is now (at least to me) very noticable, but it does still work. I've been watching his to see if I should make the transition away from Apple back to Android haha.
I have one of the newer lowend Razrs. It wasn't that expensive, less than a base model iPhone and it actually helps me use my phone less because it takes intention to actually open it.
If you prefer to carry a dedicated camera in addition to a phone, aren't you a far outlier? To the point that one of the most common sayings in photography is "the best camera is the one you carry" (even when it's the sub-par one).
The phone camera is still very much functional but it's not newest gen Pixel. It probably matches most 2-4 year old slab phones. The slab cameras are actually very much in right now and my g7x I had for 5 years now has risen in value which basically never happened with cameras before.
I think that's really that most people don't know or don't care enough about photography. Which is fine. That's up to them. But some of us do care.
"The best camera is the one you carry" is about opportunistic capture of moments i.e. it's better to record them on anything than nothing. That doesn't always work. I've lost more moments than I gained on a smartphone camera which won't focus on what I want, does weird uncorrectable things with white balance, has a pretty nasty digital zoom, or has gunk on the lens from being handled.
That's fair. (Heading off topic:) My take on that saying is that I make art when the inspiration strikes. So I am often caught carrying a minimal amount of stuff but noticing something and wanting to play with it. My very mediocre 1st gen iPhone SE is indeed absurdly far in capabilities from my serious camera - but historically there have been far worse cameras. (And it has never been quite the same since I replaced the battery and I annoy my friends by tapping the phone so it will auto-focus.)
Exactly! To add, if I take a dedicated camera with me it feels like a side quest permission to go out there and look for actual photography targets actively rather than just wait for an opportunity. It's kinda like taking a shovel to the beach - you'll end up digging some holes just because you took it.
I also bought a 2nd hand Fold 4 for $700... it lasted a year before the wifi/bluetooth broke, it stopped folding all the way, and eventually stopped booting up.
Seem to always have reliability issues with Samsung phones. Hopefully the 6th iteration is more stable.
The google fold seems better quality
I'd still prefere regular phone (wouldn't mind something smaller, like 5,5" with bigger battery) and dedicated e-ink ebook reader... it's just more convenient and with it I'm guaratneed to be distraction free...
Which app do you use to read?
Play Books is actually really underrated! It's quite minimal, cross platform with cloud state and does everything really well. One cool unique feature I found is that it can sync notes and highlights straight to a google drive folder.
> I've never stared pointlessly at my phone as much as I've done in the past month with this phone
I'm looking to go the other way thanks.
You're quoting something I didn't say and reading books is pointless?
Did the parent edit their comment, or did you choose an ungenerous interpretation of what they wrote?
This is just 4chan-style argumentation where you belittle someone by purposefully misinterpreting and misquoting them.
The latter, I've never said what the parent comment is quoting.
Yeah I also watched more youtube on the fold... I don't miss it. Except for when doing the Sunday New York Times crossword!
I thought the idea of a folding phone was just a cash grab until I saw someone on the plane across the aisle from me interacting with one. It has been a while since I saw someone get so much enjoyment out of a device. The back and forth between folded and unfolded to read messages and watch movies/read a book was mesmerizing. It made me realize that this form factor could actually enhance the user experience in a meaningful way.
I genuinely think book reading is the killer app for foldable devices. A bigger screen for a movie or TV is nice to have, but not a game changer. When you have that much screen real estate you can get a really enjoyable experience reading a novel or just easily read a textbook or research paper in a way that's simply not possible on even the largest of what you might consider a typical size phone.
Plus, you no longer need to deal with buying and maintaining a separate device like an iPad! This is why I suspect Apple is dragging its feet on the foldable category, besides letting the screen technology mature. It will probably cannibalize some sales from that market segment.
What about book reading requires a large screen?
I find my phone much more comfortable to hold than a book. It fits my hand.
You only read one sentence at a time anyway. I rather scroll, keeping the current sentence in the middle of the screen than jump around with my eyes in an open book, and having to turn pages, or keeping them flat.
Am I missing something? (Real question. I read a lot!)
Reading PDFs is the biggest case. PDFs do not (typically) dynamically reflow in a way that's usable and generally suck to read on a small screen as a result. Source: read a lot of PDFs on mobile.
But most books are probably not PDFs?
Most? Idk maybe. Most papers are. Most TTRPG books I've encountered are. Textbooks are often PDFs, not EPUBs.
Nah, I'd say most digital books are probably PDFs.
> You only read one sentence at a time anyway.
Not how I read when I read on paper & this bothers me on a phone a lot.
I'm not functionally dyslexic, but all the words pop out at the same time, you could say I read verbs, then tense, nouns after and then I read adjectives in a sentence.
But English is also my second language, so my first language's grammar probably fits closer.
Oddly enough when I first encountered lisp, the nested pile of map, fold and filter was easier because of the well trained habit of restructuring after reading verbs.
I think there are two reasons.
1) Some books have images, charts, tables, etc. The screen size makes a big difference for these.
2) The format of the "book". Reading a PDF for example is much better on a bigger screen.
Your eyes can skip around and read a lot faster. Most things I read have me skipping around quite a bit. The only time I'm straight-linear with reading is in fiction, and for that I've moved to audiobooks.
I get a lot less eye fatigue when I use a bigger screen at a larger distance.
Fair question and I read a lot on my phone too! I think the use cases that come to mind for me are comics/graphic novels and research papers. Both of these are kind of annoying to read on phones right now.
Too bad that when it comes to reading for pleasure, "all signs show a slump"...
https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2024/federal-data-reading-...
Though I agree with you that a larger reading screen would be very nice, I doubt such an experience on a device that offers endless digital distractions will reverse this downward trend - not that you said it would.
It could go both ways though. Phones get more heavy use, and foldables will probably always be more fragile than iPads, so they might wind up with more customers replacing a more expensive device more often. iPads last a really long time, which was talked about as a problem for Apple's revenue. Some day we might even get a foldable iPad.
Also I doubt that Apple's foldable phone will cost the same or less than Samsung's, as is suggested in the article...
I actually use a single screen to read epubs using my folding phone, mostly use two screens for PDFs, mangas, and videos.
> Plus, you no longer need to deal with buying and maintaining a separate device like an iPad!
I've found a much easier solution to this problem.
Exactly. Apple is adding so much to iPadOS 26 (e.g. new windowing features) that it resembles the Mac. The next foldable iPhone will be like the iPadOS prior to version 26, so that Apple can make sure iPadOS remains more powerful than iOS.
Kindles and their competitors have pretty much perfected the devices for this market. They are cheap, high quality, and last long. The few people who like to read do not mind carrying a dedicated reader. However a foldable eink reader would be interesting.
I agree with your first paragraph.
For your second, I think you don’t understand why people buy/use iPads. First off, I don’t really know anyone who uses an iPad mini for anything productive (other than as a test device). A 7-9” screen is just not useful compared to a 13” iPad for things like Sidecar or reading sheet music in live performances. The 7-9” screen being an unfolded phone doesn’t change this.
A folding iPhone could eat the iPad mini, but that’s never been a cash cow for Apple or something power users cared about - it’s more of an “iPod touch” for kids. (And frankly, the Switch 2 kind of obsoletes it.) The thing that would eat 13” iPads’ lunch is something more like Apple Vision.
Weirdly enough, the iPad Mini is probably the iPad most used for work. The size & weight are perfect for many scenarios. Pilots, warehouses, and field work of all sorts.
For me personally, it's my travel machine. I've done all sorts of things with it on the road. From SSH to using Photoshop to make some last minute edits. It (barely) fits in my pockets so I don't even need a bag for it. Probably my favorite machine ever at least in terms of form factor.
Screen size does seem to be a personal choice. For me, I've always liked small screens for portability. I'm the weirdo who actually got work done on the first gen Asus EEE PC and didn't mind it. But I can understand that wouldn't be for everyone.
The iPad Mini form factor with cell connectivity is pretty great when you're travelling light.
My normal international travel load-out is a backup smart phone + an 8" LTE tablet with eSIM + bluetooth keyboard. It's about as minimal as I can get while still having a real keyboard and functional screen size to handle travel logistics.
My folding phone has completely replaced my ipad pro (which was my favorite device until now)
> I don’t really know anyone who uses an iPad mini for anything productive
I guess you don't know many pilots? :)
What do pilots use them for?
Electronic flight bag, contains all the information a pilot needs.
This is the app they use https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ForeFlight
Pilots use iPads for all of the charts and checklists. Even having two iPads (one as a backup) is much lighter and thinner (and easier to update) than the paper copies it replaces.
747_getting_started.pdf
so_you_want_to_be_a_pilot.epub
Phones replaced computers for most people, so I think folding phones can replace tablets.
The big future that I see for foldables is as tablets for note takers.
Microsoft and Apple have already proven that students are willing to shell out the money to buy $1000+ products just to take hand written digital notes on. If Samsung or someone else could create a foldable that's in the ~$1500 range that can fold out into the size of an ipad mini AND has a good pen usage and storage situation, I believe it will sell incredibly well.
It'd be so cool to be able to walk to a lecture with only your phone.
I used to take notes on my Newton MessagePad back at a time when college professors would _not_ allow folks to use laptops for notetaking --- agree, in addition to folding, you pretty much need a stylus for note-taking (and for an Apple Pencil, I'd worry about the "tick" one gets each time it's touched to the screen).
That said, these days I use a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, Amazon Kindle Scribe w/ Premium Pen, Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, and when at a desk, a MacBook and Wacom One display, all with Wacom EMR --- no folding devices, since there doesn't yet seem to be one which uses the normal frequencies (most recent foldables used the same frequency for the stylus as is usually used for the eraser?!?).
I'd give a lot for a competitor to the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i which used a Wacom EMR stylus, or for a phone which used a standard Wacom EMR stylus.
I’d be tempted by a foldable iPhone if (and only if) they have a stylus, but I don’t expect them to.
The form factor doesn’t lend itself to storing a comfortably sized “pencil” along with the phone, and god forbid an Apple accessory exist that doesn’t feel perfectly integrated with the product it goes with.
Multi app works pretty well too, when I need to cross reference between apps throwing them each up on the split halves is way better than swapping back and forth.
That's curious. Folding phones are in the same bucket as 3D television in my mind.. but I'm probably not the target market.
Same thoughts.
I did try one, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold for 6 months before going back to iOS (I'm too deep on the ecosystem, but I like to try Android again every once in a while).
I think I only used it unfolded like three times. It was pretty much pointless for me.
Anything I need a bigger screen for, I almost always have either my laptop or iPad with me for that. I don't WANT to do things on my phone, I actually want to use it less - a foldable offers the alternative deal, where you want to and actively use your phone for more and more tasks forgoing other devices.
Not for me, probably never will be.
You probably are in the target market but it's hard to understand how life changing it is without having one for at least a day.
It's only life changing if you use your phone for most of your computing. I don't, I tried a foldable and barely used it unfolded, just didn't "get it." If I need to do something that's frustrating on a phone screen, I don't use my phone - I almost always have my laptop with me, or my iPad near by. If I don't, it can probably wait until I get home anyway.
Consequently, probably why I might be "downgrading" from a pro max down to the new iPhone Air. No bulk, no excessive camera array...just a thin, light phone.
That's exactly my phone use. I still want a fast phone because a laggy interface will make my phone use even more annoying for the use I do have, but trying a foldable for a week or so it just felt like something clunkier to carry around in between using my tablet or desktop.
Then you got the wrong foldable phone - you should have gone for the flip - that's way smaller and more pocketable than air. Will probably get you similar battery stats.
Sounds horrible to me. Why would I want to do the extra step of flipping things open and typing in two form factors. But then I’m not really watching long form videos on my phone so maybe I’m just not the target market.
Imagine that you need to grab your laptop or your tablet because you need a larger screen, now you can just do that from a small movement
Except e.g. the 7.6" Pixel Fold screen is still only a third of the area of a 13" MacBook (not to mention a desktop).
To people (like me) who want bigger screens, your comment reads akin to "Imagine that you need to grab your phone because you need a 6" screen, now instead you can just flip out a second screen from your Apple Watch and have a 2.5" screen."
A macbook pro is so small compared to my big tv in the living room
I had never seen one in the wild until I made a new friend recently, who has one of the foldable Samsung devices. My initial impression was that it is clunky, way too thick/large for comfortable pocket storage+running and it looks cheap for how much it cost... and last week my friend said he got his first ever dead pixel of any of his devices on the foldable phone. Take that opinion and info as you will.
The Fold 7, new this year, is hardly clunky. It's less than 1mm thicker than an iPhone Pro when folded and is only 4.2mm when open where it has an 8" screen. It's surprisingly un-clunky.
I know less than ten people with foldable phones, but without fail they all claim that the screen is durable, but I have yet to see any foldable phone without a cracked screen after a few years.
A lot of people crack their normal smartphone screens too. Every mall's got a guy making a living off of fixing them.
Screen is really good on the google folding 9. On the other hand my gf broke her iphone screen twice in one week (the second time a few days after getting an official repair...)
I've had 2 Samsung fold phones, no dead pixels. They have been perfect, and very much not "clunky". "looks cheap"? How? It's probably the most well built phone I've ever had, and I've had all the brands, even an iPhone that didn't work well (remember "you're holding it wrong"?).
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Been using a flip for four years (Samsung) and will buy another when the time comes (not necessarily Samsung).
Ever wanted a smaller phone? That's a flip phone, it just happens to expand when you need it. Ever drop your phone and damage the screen ? The closed flip phone is super sturdy. Ever wanted to put your phone on the table and use it with one hand, laptop style? Flip. Even in general use, having it slightly bent towards you is a nicer experience that a fully flat phone.
Yes, it has a slight crease in the middle, it has never bothered me even a little. And now, there's an actual microcrack across the crease, doesn't really bother me either, but for some people it might. Look forward to improvements in the next generations.
I had the Flip 2, 3, and 5. I just switched to the Moto Razr Ultra and I feel like it is even better. The external screen works almost like the internal screen, making it extremely easy to use. Samsung locks down their external screen pretty hard and you need a lot of work arounds that still don't give me the same functionality as the Razr.
I also got the Clicks physical keyboard case for it, which turns it into a modern Blackberry type phone. I love it. The physical keyboard means no on-screen keyboard taking up your external screen space. I only actually open my phone a few times a day, which really helps keep doomscrolling at bay. Full discloser, the keyboard isn't perfect and definitely has some quirks and tradeoffs but on the whole I'm glad I got it.
When it goes on sale, I'm going to give it a go with the Moto Razr 2025 with the Clicks keyboard case. Closed, it looks almost exactly like an old Blackberry, but it can flip open to a normal-ish (coming from an iPhone Mini very tall) screen when needed.
If Samsung had a better reputation for privacy they’re the brand I’d switch to for one of their folders.
I’m put off by how Samsung monetise every data source they’re trusted with though. E.g. TV viewing, phone data, Samsung Pay, forced analytics, etc.
As a brand they don't seem to have any restraint when it comes to user privacy.
I switched to a Motorola after my Samsung repeatedly nagged me about offers in my area with the ever popular "not now" instead of "f*ck off" button.
I'd like a foldable but not so much to pay $1300 for the Razr.
What Samsung did you have? Afaik their flagships don't have any nagging. And which Motorola did you get? Don't they have the same promotional nagging?
Most my phones are the low end free-to-get-you-to-sign-up models.
AT&T doesn't have low end Motorolas so I bought an unlocked, guaranteed to work with AT&T, sub $300 one directly off motorola.com and took it to the AT&T store.
So far it's left me alone.
Low-end Android all have the same nagging adware or if they're not nagging they're definitely selling your data way more than flagships where customer UX is a priority.
>they're definitely selling your data way more than flagships where customer UX is a priority.
I'd to see some evidence for this claim. It seems to be a ridiculous offhand claim to make in this era of late stage capitalism. Flagship phones owners are wealthier, their data is more valuable for customer acquisition. Why in god's name would those penny pinchers leave that kind of money on the table? It makes no sense. It's not like flagship phone owners can track whether their data is being sold any better than low end phone owners.
They might make it harder to turn data collection off in low end phones, but that says nothing of their desire to be able to sell the data of flagship phone owners.
Every company doesn't do well with privacy. So the next step matters -- security.
Out of all the companies, Google and Samsung are by far the most secure companies in terms of breaches and the magnitude of those breaches.
Of course, not going to that next step would be ideal, but at least you have some control over your choice on security.
There is a positive side to that though. For example, their alternative to Apple's Find My seems to work quite well.
I bought a zfold 7 about a month ago, it has been without a doubt the coolest new device I have purchased in many years. It's unbelievably thin, if you use it in normal phone mode you can't even tell that it's a fold. I have installed so many fun apps. I downloaded Mihon which is a manga/comic reader and I've read the first 10 volumes of Berserk, it's such a great experience reading manga on the fold screen. I also got NetherSX2 which is a PS2 emulator, it's insane to me that a phone can emulate PS2 games perfectly, I played thru a good bit of Kingdom Hearts one night with a Switch controller connected via bluetooth. I also downloaded ReadEra and have read some of the Malazan fantasy series on the device. I can play Oldschool Runescape while watching YouTube videos at the same time. I have RVNC viewer and have used it to connect to a Linux system downstairs to manage one of my systems. The split keyboard on fold mode is super easy and fast to type on, I'm using it right now to send this message. The web browsing experience is great because unlike iPhone, I can have uBlock origin and desktop mode websites look great on the fold screen.
Having both a phone and tablet in your pocket is phenomenal. I don't think I can go back at this point. Apple knows this, which is imo why the rumor is the new iPhone 17 will have a fold option for a higher price. If you think it's gimmicky, you haven't tried it yet.
I love the idea of them, but I just can't trust the basically plastic surface of them. Scratches/dents too easily.
I mean there's only Samsung and LG in the display space basically, one of them will solve it but...not quite yet.
Samsung Folds 1-6 are kinda bad, much worse than competitors. Samsung Fold 7 is really good, so are Honor phones (V3, V5). Honor folds are sold on Amazon in Europe. Currently own V3 one, 1 year in, so far so good, feels really sturdy.
Feels like the iPhone Air is just a test run for Apple's own folding phone. If you attach two iPhone Airs with a hinge and a little extra screen to create one seamless display, and boom, there's your folding iPhone.
If you attached 2 iPhone Airs, you'd have a chonky foldable at 11.2mm getting into territory where people complained with the previous Samsung.
Samsung's current, Fold 7, is 8.9mm closed. Turns out you can actually go thinner than a thin slab like Samsung Edge (5.8mm) or iPhone Air (5.6mm) because you can move components out of one side and put them in the other, including battery. This lets Samsung build a foldable that's 4.2mm when open, meaningfully slimmer than either the Edge or Air.
My guess is Apple's book-style foldable will be ~4mm open and ~8.5mm closed and just edges out Samsung's Fold 8 when they ship next year.
And it's still worse than an Honor Magic
the fold 7 genuinely made me want to get a foldable for the first time, was that sleek. if it wasn't for being captive to the apple ecosystem i would strongly consider it (and may do so).
i think with agentic coding now my ideal setup would be to be able to walk away and remote in from my heavy desktop/laptop w/ just my phone and check in on stuff and do some light work, etc.
obviously i would still have my laptop but i wouldn't have to lug it around everywhere.
Personally I think they're ugly. They might have some functional advantage, that I don't know. I believe they're going to be the cyber truck of mobile phones, primarily a status symbol.
Yes but it's not ugly in the look/fashion sense, it's just ugly because it doesn't match a reality where it has a purpose.
Either they have good form factor closed but they suck open or they have good form factor open but they suck closed. They could go with no external screen but it would be much more annoying to use. And I think it says something fundamental about smartphones, that Steve Jobs intuitively understood: it's a good tool when you can pull it out of your pocket and use it in seconds (preferably one-handed when possible). Having a bigger screen but that needs to be unfolded doesn't add any benefits to this primary need and ends up requiring a lot of compromises (weight/volume, compromising pocket ability) for uses cases that are infrequent and would be better served by a typical table anyway. Funnily enough, in those situations you are quite likely to have the bag to carry this solution so the foldable phone becomes moot.
To make things worse, they are ridiculously expensive, often more than what it would cost to buy both an equivalent phone and tablet, which is at the same time stupid and genius. And yes, this is precisely why they are a social status thing. You have to be quite affluent to buy something so practically stupid, you are basically burning cash.
I find folding phones interesting for what they so aptly demonstrate about life in general: no matter how hard you try, you can't have it both ways.
I'm reading your comment like a review of smartphones from a nokia 8210 user
Hey I'll take that as a compliment.
I'll say this: I live in France and when Apple announced the first iPhone, I imported it from the US at great costs. So, it's not like if I am a luddite, I'm just able to understand what's good and useful while you may not.
Im reading this from a fold actually :D it feels like I'm looking at the past
The iPhone was released nearly 20 years ago. This would be like someone in 2007 bragging that they aren't a Luddite because they bought windows 1.0 when it came out.
What are you even saying? It's funny you think I'm bragging.
Here is the thing, people are buying foldables only to show off, the functionality/usefulness makes no sense for the vast majority of people. Which is why they are still expensive and it will stay that way.
Even tech reviewers with infinite choices and zero affordability issues are not using them. If they were any good, they would be using them daily, but it's not the case.
What I'm saying about the first iPhone is that it was good and useful on release day, even though it was a flawed product missing many things that would only come later. And the cost wasn't a problem.
We have had many generations of foldables with improvement/refinements everywhere and they are still nowhere close to being ubiquitous or mainstream. At its 4th generation, Apple was selling 50 million iPhones globally even though it was one of the most expensive phones you could buy. We are in the 6th or 7th generation of foldable and they are not reaching anywhere near those numbers. Even if the price would come close to a regular smartphone it's doubtful that most would pay up because there are other compromises.
Fundamentally, foldables are niche products for tech geeks or people who like to show off, they will stay niche, just like VR and 3D before them.
I have been right on both of those before, do you want to make a bet?
Stop arguing, just go to a store and try a folding phone, there's a reason people see them as the next big unlock
The Fold 7 is thin enough that it's a convenient phone when not opened.
That's the thing, all phones are ugly, but folding phones bring such life improvements that nobody seems to care.
I bought mine because it's useful, it's weird to read that someone would think that it's a status symbol. Are noise canceling headphones a status symbol too for you?
Noise cancelling is a feature and useful. Airpods? Annoying, I can't tell if the person on the sidewalk is trippin' or talking to someone on the phone via their difficult to see airpods.
I mean who cares that much what their metal slab looks like? I jest because I know lots of people do, but it really should be a thing primarily for function. I'd like a foldable if it had as nice cameras as my current phone.
If you make a lot of selfies then the camera is actually better.
When making selfies on a regular phone, you use the front-facing camera which is often sub-par. But with the Samsung Folds, you use the main camera for selfies (you flip open the phone, and see the viewfinder on the outside screen).
I never make selfies
Flip phones are really the only phone product that actually excites me
Flip phones happened because tech have plateaued, so downstream product development iterated on weird phone casings and keyboard placements.
Why does it excite you?
For me, it's the first true upgrade in the design of a phone in a long time. It's not a slightly better CPU or battery, but a different way to work with this key device in my life. I think it will be the default phone format in ~5 years, especially for younger people.
It reminds me the phones from 2005, they were really cool and smaller in ya pocket
If one is interested in small smartphones, the Unihertz Jelly series of phones might satisfy that interest.
(Amazingly, "small" is roughly the size of the Nexus S... which I found to be the ideal phone size for my large hands.)
I’d love the Jelly, but all of Unihertz’s stuff is basically devoid of software updates :( I’m not gonna buy e-waste.
Can you type with only one hand on a flip phone ?
Do you actually mean "flip"? Because when open, with the screen opened upwards, they have roughly the same dimensions as any modern slab phone. Then it'd come down to whether your hand is big enough to type one-handed on that formfactor (a few women, some men).
If you mean "fold", then probably only while closed, subject to the same hand-size limits. While open, with the screen opened to the left, like a book, they're quite a bit wider than even the largest human hand could reasonably type on.
Sure, just fold it.
I've had a flip 3 and flip 5 which both had screen and hinge problems within a year. I love the form factor but just don't take it to the beach.
My flip 5 inner screen is currently unusable so I'm stuck using the small square cover screen which I'm enjoying quite a bit too. I don't know if my next phone should be a flip phone or a small phone, but nothing gets as small or as good hardware as the front cover of these flip phones, vs other small phones
I responded in another thread about the iPhone Air that I wanted something from Apple that's smaller than my current iPhone 13 mini. There are at least two of us!
If they made a flip style iPhone that closed smaller than the mini and opened to similar size or only a bigger, I’d definitely buy it.
Call me old fashioned but I hope Apple always keeps the iphone without folding, and always keeps ipad.
I love both devices for different things, I don’t want them smushed together.
Samsung is no longer leading the pack for folding. They refuse to innovate; Fold 7 is almost identical to Fold 4. Cameras are sub-par and they removed pen support. Meanwhile Honor Magic V5 has pen support on both screens, top of the range cameras, silicon-carbide batteries, and is 4.1mm thick unfolded!
Almost identical? The Fold 4 was 14.2mm thick and weighed 263g while the Fold 7 is 8.9mm and weighs 215g.
The Z Fold 4 feels like two flagships stacked in your pocket. The Fold 7 is lighter than an iPhone Pro max and only a vinyl sticker thicker. It feels identical to a flagship in your pocket but it's got an 8" screen. Not innovative? Where's Apple's innovation toward an 8" smartphone?
Yes, it's 30% thinner... it still has no innovation with cameras, new battery technology, and removal of pen support? I am not comparing it to apple, I'm comparing it to Honor, OnePlus/Vivo, Xiaomi - China has far more development in the folding phone sector at the moment. Their phones have been consistently thinner and lighter and Samsung is only just beginning to catch up.
I definitely did not see that coming. In my mind, foldable phones were the 3D TV of the phones.
Interesting development though. Nice to see something that is both cool looking and, apparently, useful getting traction.
Apple are in a bind here since the bend/crease will degrade over time. Other manufacturers get a pass on this sort of stuff (just look at Pixel phones not making emergency calls for a prime example), but apple will be hit with fines and class action lawsuits.
Apple sometimes manages to wait out bad ideas: they never gave into the bad idea of touchscreen "convertible" laptops, just conceding the touch bar which is now extinct.
That's a most generous reading of the touchbar fiasco I've ever seen (and I've heard a lot of Apple fans speak).
IMO the touchbar was the least-bad thing about my touchbar 2017 MBP. The butterfly keyboard, flexgate, the USB-C ports that lost their ability to retain cables after like 20 insertions, and the overheating and quickly-degrading battery were much bigger issues.
I didn't really get much value out of the touchbar (never really used any per-app touchbar functionality), but it was mostly fine -- I adjusted to the touchbar escape key pretty quickly.
I wasn't trying to be generous. I was making a nod toward something like malicious compliance. I used to have a big old Mercedes sedan that had the worst cupholder in automotive history that would break as soon as possible. It was designed to pop out of a slot in the center console. But real German car drivers finish their coffee before stepping into the car. That's how I see the touch bar. It was meant to be awful.
Wait until Apple comes out with a folding phone, they'll say it was the plan all along lol
Don't make it sound like Apple is some sort of victim of regulation who's being picked on the whole time.
They will not get fines and lawsuits if they make a foldable phone with a display that degrades over time.
I do think a move like this will hurt their reputation for making durable devices. They are a victim of their own success a little here.
> Don't make it sound like Apple is some sort of victim of regulation who's being picked on the whole time.
I didn’t say this. I would merely accept other companies being held to the same standard.
> They will not get fines and lawsuits if they make a foldable phone with a display that degrades over time.
This will 100% happen. When it does I will come back and post here.
They never got any significant fine for bendgate, "you're holding it wrong", problematic butterfly keyboards or secretly slowing down iphones due to degraded batteries.
Am I missing some other blunder?
Antennagate : https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/17/2807511/apple-settles-ant...
Butterfly: https://www.keyboardsettlement.com/
Batterygate: multiple countries. Here’s Canada: https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-pay-c144-mln-settle... US: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/18/apple-f...
Nothing for bendgate
Yes, a lot of the time they settle, so no admission of guilt but it still costs them money.
> They will not get fines and lawsuits if they make a foldable phone with a display that degrades over time.
They got lawsuits because of batteries that degraded over time.
They got lawsuits because they purposely chose a battery that would not be sufficient after a few years of use because they wanted a thin phone, and instead of copping to that and providing support for users to cheaply and easily replace such underspecced batteries, they silently updated their OS to just throttle itself to death to "fix" it.
These batteries were not fit for purpose. The phone design was defective. It literally could not manage after normal and expected degradation.
Imagine if, after Microsoft failed to build the Xbox 360 correctly, they just silently throttled all the machines to reduce the chance they would fail, rather than what they had to do, which was replace all the defective machines, 25% of the fleet, on their own dime.
In most countries that aren't the USA, consumers have a right to expect their products to work for some time and be fit for purpose. Apple blatantly violated that right, and used a quiet software update to hide that.
Apple loves to just deny and ignore their design failures. It used to be the norm for Macbooks to just cook their GPU to death, and apple would always refuse to acknowledge such things until they settled the lawsuit and quietly put up some sort of "we will fix this at your expense" program.
I was sceptical about this for factor seeing as it seemed like a gimmicky throwback to the early to mid 2000s.
But honestly, now that I've played around with Samsungs offerings I get it. Back in the day phones had quite a bit of personality, and Samsung really nailed that aspect.
The newest thin fold looks amazing but I can't justify a $2K phone idk maybe I'm just poor. Like I used to want a Lamborghini Aventador but now I just want a Lotus Exige. $300K seems too much too me but again is it a poor/mindset thing. I think a land would be better use of that money.
Mindset as in levels... I used to be afraid of my $30K student debt while I was in school thinking getting an engineering job that pays $60K would be great but now I make more than that and my debt is also beyond $30K so yeah levels.
lol, what is going on inside this comment, you're like whiplashing between having preferences and explaining why you should want fancy things but then actually you don't.
like... it's completely okay to not want something expensive not because you're poor but because you just don't want to spend money on it; your preferences for what's worth money to you don't have to be justified to anyone else. Except for maybe your family.
Personally I don't have any desire to buy any of those expensive things at all, because I don't even notice their existence, but that's just me. Seems better to be minimalistic. Similarly, to not have any debt, because why would you want to be more stressed and tied to a job than the minimum possible? But maybe it's different if your friends / social circle cares about shiny things or something.
Yeah I'm working on the debt part
The car thing I like driving fast/sporty cars, cheapest one for performance would be an older Corvette but yeah (not saying Lambo is performance, that one it's the looks, Exige though is both though different eg. acceleration/curve handling vs. top speed).
I'm just saying, there was a guy I was talking to who owned a Lambo and he's like "if it went up in flames I'd be fine", it's like I have to get to that headspace or maybe I'm not built that way not sure
But yeah I do go back and forward between wanting things/feeling guilty for being better off than others
It sounds like you're trying to feel what you're supposed to feel according to other people, and then feeling anxious about that's not how you actually feel? which sounds hard. I'm pretty sure the only way to be that makes any sense, however, is to feel what you actually feel, and if someone tries to make that seem wrong or bad, tell them (mentally or out loud) to fuck off. It's not possible to force yourself to feel differently than you feel--that's, like, what a feeling is. If something makes you think you should modify your feelings, it's wrong, like it's a complete category error; you can only react to them, not will them to change.
Not that I don't fall in the same trap, but, y'know, it's an aspiration.
and personally I'd judge the hell out of someone who owned a lambo and didn't care about it going up in flames. We get it, they want people to think they're so rich that they don't care about their own possessions. All I hear is a person try to say certain things in order to make you find them impressive.
I just want smaller phones. Where did they all go?
Just incase people were confused like me, this article is a bit dated and published Aug 16th.
This article seems a bit silly.
If we look at Q3 and Q4 sales, I bet it shows Apple increasing its share of phones shipped.
Comparing one company’s share in a quarter where they launch new devices to another company’s share when that company launched no new devices is, frankly, stupid.
It would be nice if the extra room when unfolded could be used for a real keyboard. Probably too thin for one, though.
Most of the foldables I’ve seen around here, are the new Razr phones.
I think they are pretty cool.
Haven’t seen many, though.
I’ve only seen one Samsung.
Everyone is forgetting that Apple had a foldable phone in 2014/15
Seems like people in this thread cant take a joke.
Lie.
They're joking about "bendgate" (the iPhone 6 was not very rigid).
bendghazi*
I have got Samsung S25 Edge which is essentially Samsung's version of iPhone 17 Air few months ago.
Only thing (software wise) which has really been showed down my throat is Bixby and Gemini. No I don't want your stupid AI, get deleted. Other than that, I can't complain about anything.
Do they have a hinge monitor so you can make them fart when you fold and unfold them?
I'm curious how quickly that trend will reverse when Google fulfills their promise to lock down sideloading on android.
Samsung makes nice hardware, but their bloatware is infuriating. I spend a lot of time on every new device, using ADB to purge as many samsung apps as I can. I'm getting tired of doing it.
Once I can't sideload anymore on android, my next phone will be an iphone.
The trend, if there is one, will be effected in no measurable way when a few nerds bail because they can't remove Samsung's browser.
By the way, outside of core phone features like Phone (dialer,) Settings, Camera, etc. you can disable or uninstall everything else without sideloading anything.
Very, very, very few consumers even know what sideloading is
Unfortunately, very few people care about sideloading.
And for those who do, Apple has been blocking sideloading for years.
The actual solution is to buy a phone that supports GrapheneOS. No bloatware, install what you want, and get top class security and privacy too.
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BUT WHY?
It costs 2000 dollars and folds in half. So what? What's the difference?
Foldables are a fad. Yeah, you can doomscroll with a bigger screen, but having to baby it? Also foldables, even when folded are bulkier. For whatever usecases for foldables, a tablet is more suitable.
Believe it or not people use phones for different purposes. Some people carry phones in bags or purses where space not a not a big concern. Some people use their phones for work and a bigger screen is helpful in the process and for multitasking. Some people aren't rough with their phones either.
A fad doesn't last this long. We are on year 7 of foldables available in the mainstream and sales and production are only increasing. Every major OEM has at least foldable or is releasing one soon. 3D TV's were fully dead in 7 years for context.
I hope the iPhone Air is successful. Folding phones seems so obviously a gimmick. A year from now many of these relatively affordable folding phones will be e-trash, and social media will be full of complaints and retrospective wisdom about how they could never have been reliable. But consumer product offerings are full of gimmicks. Apple is trying not to give into herd mentality.
My parents are both on their third flip phones. Some people really like the form factor
It's funny. When/If Apple releases a foldable iPhone, suddenly most of these critics will think it's the greatest idea ever.
Just like Apple released touchscreen laptops, amirite? They were a bad idea and a crime against ergonomics.
This but unironically. The funniest product in Apple's lineup right now, bar none, is the iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard. Apple spent 15 years refining their replacement for the laptop, and it's a touchscreen laptop that runs less software.
You'd think that Apple would stop themselves after reinventing the 2013 Microsoft Surface. Then they reprised Hololens with Vision Pro - how was nobody paying attention to Microsoft's failures at Cupertino?
The iPhone Air will quite likely be successful, but it's also plainly a gimmick.
Folding phone user here, you will have one in the next 5 years for sure
Apple is probably baffled as to why 10 generations of foldable by the competition my set them back some. I guarantee one day Apple will figure out how to put touch in a laptop and it will be world changing </s> I can’t name a single real iPhone innovation in a decade.
I'll be totally honest, I do not get the appeal of foldable phones, at least with the designs I've seen so far.
I guess you can unfold it to get a bigger 2-part screen? That's about it?
I'd imagine that having it be un-foldable compromises the battery life, overall thickness (when folded) and weight to at least some extent - plus it costs way more. Is the additional screen real-estate really worth that?
If your eyes are young and you only use the phone alone. If you are older you need reading glasses for small screens. If you are showing a video to someone else you need a larger screen to see detail.
of course not knowing you or your uses I can't say if any of this should matter to you. Still it seems like a nice idia not a fad. Only time will tell if people really want it once the fad is over.
> it be un-foldable compromises the battery life, overall thickness (when folded) and weight to at least some extent
Not as much as you would think.
The Galaxy Fold 7 has a 6.5" outer screen (as compared to 6.3" screen in the iPhone 16 pro), is 8.9mm thick when folded (8.25mm in the iPhone 16 pro), has a 4400mAh battery (3,582 mAh in the iPhone 16 pro), and weighs 215g (199 grams for the iPhone 16 pro).
> plus it costs way more
The big downsides are price of $1999 launch price as compared to $999 launch price for the iphone 16 pro and durability. For durability, the foldable screens seem to be very soft making it easy to damage, say with a thumbnail.
I could see it for older people.
My mom and uncles all use extremely large font sizes, they’re barely able to see a whole text at once and they check pictures by traversing them while highly zoomed.
It doesn’t appeal to me either, but I’ve often heard “functionality, taken to an extreme, becomes fashion”. I think that might be what’s happening here. There are _some_ cases in which you might want a foldable phone. But even if you don’t need it, a (good) foldable phone becomes a status symbol.
See also: expensive mechanical watches, sports cars, bottles that hold temperature for 24 hours
I’d much rather have a screen that unfurls like a scroll.
Checkout Huawei Mate XT: 2 folds
It could be an SNL skit
It's funny now that Apple is speculated to have a foldable phone on the drawing board, I can hear in real time all the tech "journalists" swinging their viewpoints around from considering it a joke to saying what a good idea it is and how they can't wait for it. Some of them already talking like Apple invented it, before they even have a product. Seems like Apple still has the reality distortion field.