• Budy, all I want is a linux phone without a bunch of proprietary, binary blobs that aren’t supported after 2 years, and a thick, replaceable battery that lasts me 3-5 days on average with daily usage.

    With the amount of money they are dumping into these gimmicks, they could instead be significantly changing the market by improving ARM or RISC-V linux and making highly portable computers that fit in your pocket and that you can just plug into a screen where you go. They could merge the mobile gaming market with that of the desktop and console market that way for example. One unified OS with the same APIs and frameworks and whole host of native programming languages.

    They could rival laptop manufacturers with their low-power, portable devices. Or even enter the OS market that way by providing a linux distro that they can sell and maintain.

    I dunno… just anything but these damn foldables.

    CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

    • You will never get that battery if it makes the device thicker. I was in the industry, we made smartphones with a two day battery. Full on thick, in direct response to customers asking.

      None sold. Period. It was something like 8-10mm thicker.

      Everyone looked at the one with the thick battery then the thin and bought that.

      • Motorola makes phones with two day batteries (5000 mAh standard, some going up to 6000 mAh) and their market share is growing, recently reaching third place in the US behind Apple and Samsung. And it’s all in the standard size, forget being 8-10mm thicker, they’re 8-10mm total.

      • Purism made the Librem 5. It’s a chonker and has bad battery life and they only sold a few thousand units. However, if rappers can make dumb phones and sell out 10k units in a few days, I dare say there’s a market for thick phones with good batteries, it’s just that rappers and celebs do better marketing and have a wider audience.

        • Marketing maketh the product. Absolutely true and a thick one there would sell.

          If you put two devices down, one thick and one thin, all other things being equal and without an influencer hawking jt. People take the thin one.

  • Until we get to the point where I can completely fold my phone into a ring around one of my wrists without it breaking, I don’t see a need for a folding phone. It feels more like a gimmick to sell a device more than a useful feature, to me at least

  • At the right price I’d definitely like a foldable. Certainly many people would prefer the smaller form factor at the right price/durability. The durability constraints are largely solved now, so the main concern is pricing.

    • I watch a lot of video on my phone during breaks at work.

      For me, that is the main usage. If I am at home, I’m using my iPad or desktop for everything else I would possibly need that larger foldable screen for.

      I’m not against foldables, but price needs to be reasonable, as it solely serves to replace my normal smartphone, and it’s not worth it unless it’s within $100 of the equivalent phone/hardware without the foldable screen.

  • Make postmarked os drivers a thing. Let me run whatever OS I want, it’s 2023 for crying out loud.

    Also, I would sooner buy a device that is easier to repair and find spare parts for.

    I feel very silly having to advocate for these basic computing necessities.