My biggest gripe is a lack of low-end phones with massive screens that aren’t high-end.
Both my parents are octogenarians with declining vision. I just want to get them into an iPhone whose screen they can actually see easily, but without going into that low-functionality “assistive access” mode.
Because it doesn’t help if the interface doesn’t allow you to tell apart two different phone numbers for the same person. Like, literally - it just shows the label, not the phone number, and when both numbers have the same label…
I’ve been using a Galaxy Flip for years. Never going back to the big slab. Rumors of screen life are pure internet bullshit.
I love mine, had a folding for for 5 years now. Currently using a Razr. They work great, display works for about 2-3 years is my experience. It’s usually cheaper to buy a new one than repair as the display assembly is a new chassis with the hinge.
I don’t use a case, the display is protected by closing it, but Motorola included one and they include the protective screen cover (mandatory). As flexible display technology improves, I expect they will last longer.A whole group of folding phone haters has emerged, normal people just don’t buy the thing they don’t want. Theses people go on crusades blathering on about their opinion, of which I couldn’t care less about. They seem to be triggered by the area where the display bends ( I don’t notice it) but it is there and I can feel it, how fragile the device is but I see people with broken displays on regular phones all the time, and the price ( they can’t afford one? ). I assume they just need a proper hobby.
I got an “open box” OG Pixel Fold for $350 last November. Everything else new or refurb in the price range was just another rectangular slab. I like the squarish aspect ratio for chess and reading but 16:9 video comes with black bars coving 1/3 of the screen. I dislike the taller foldables that came after and I assume it’ll be much more than 2 years before the new passport shaped foldables are available as refurbs for less than $500 so if/when this one conks out I’ll be back to using a slab phone as a hotspot for an ipad mini.
Nah. The worst possible thing they could be is the second worst thing.
The worst thing to happen to smarohones was when Androids stopped coming with slide-out physical keyboards.
Fuck Apple for many reasons, but the onscreen keyboard is the most egregious and unforgivable of those reasons.
It was ok until predictive text and swiping went completely to sit (for example).
It was never ok. It was tolerable, but I resented losing the keyboard before I got to.the second generation of phones that didn’t have one.
I’d happily pay the absolutely stupid prices they want to charge for the stupid foldy phones to get something with modern flagship specs and the form factor of the G1.
Just use an usb-c keyboard, you can use a much bigger one than would ever fit in a phone. Those tiny ones where a thumb covers 5 keys at a time weren’t that great, SwiftKey is much faster
No. It should be integrated into the phone, impossible to leave somewhere and incapable of having connection issues.
The fact that most smartphone users are illiterate and would rather watch a video and send voice notes than actually write anything worth reading isn’t an excuse to make the phone useless to anyone capable of forming complete sentences.
Why would you want a bigger phone with less battery life for the 5 times a decade you need to write a novel? I can get up to about 50 wpm on a smartphone. Past that, it has to be a full-size keyboard. The slide-out ones aren’t any better than an on-screen one.
If you can’t use one, or haven’t configured it to fit your style, that’s a skill issue.
Still literally zero good reason for them to exist
They easily fit into any pocket. This isn’t rocket appliances.
Thats not a reason for it to exist. Normal phones do that even better
As a foldable owner: you are wrong. You may not care for it, I respect that much.
The worst thing to happen was the boring black rectangle format winning and all other designs disappearing. You don’t have to buy a foldable if you don’t want to. It’s next to impossible to buy anything that’s doesn’t look like every other phone on the market.
You can buy a modern reasonably powerful flipphone that runs android, there just aren’t enough people interested in something that isn’t the brick because the brick is, for most people, the optimal form factor for a phone.
I miss full slide-out qwerty keyboards.
That was the peak of pre-iPhone cell phone tech imo
Same 😢 I’ve been looking around for one for years but there’s nothing that can run deGoogled android.
No slide out, but unihertz and clicks are both making a BlackBerry style form factor with android and physical keyboard :)
(Clicks one is called the clicks communicator. Figured I’d mention since that might be helpful to know if anyone wanted to look it up)
I’m familiar with both. I think it’s possible to run LineageOS on some unihertz but the support is not solid enough for me to risk it. Clicks is fairly new, I think they open source some stuff but it’s not supported by anything deGoogled yet.
Oops, I think I meant to reply to the same person you were replying to
I do think I saw clicks say they were talking to a custom ROM project, but I’m not positive I’m remembering that right
Two bricks held together with a hinge is weaker than just a brick… Who would have thought…
From the article:
“I recently posted my take about this on Mastodon and I accidentally rage-baited one of my good friends who daily-drives a folding phone. So he messaged me on Signal passionately defending it. He finds it useful as a phone + iPad Mini replacement, especially since he bought his used for $400”
Therein lies the issue. The future that Apple, Google, et al sees is one where we move towards device convergence. There was a brief period where it wasn’t uncommon for a person to have a phone, tablet, laptop or desktop, etc. if you go back a bit more there were even more devices (iPods, cd players, etc). but the modern context has shown that phones can do a LOT of compute. An iphone 16 pro max from 2 years ago can perform around the level of a GeForce 1050, an aging but still somewhat viable card, except where that takes around 75 watts the iphone gpu takes 6-7 (lol). The iphone 18 pro max is closer to a 1060, which is about double the compute power. And then you have stuff like the m5 ipad which is a bit more powerful.
They’re not top end machine equivalents but they don’t have to be. 80-90% of users (possibly more) don’t do anything that requires such compute power. This has been reflected in consumer spending for years now. Smartphone and laptop sales are still growing, albeit at a slower rate, whereas desktop and laptop sales continue to fall. The future is people using smartphones for everything, tablets for power users, and laptops/desktops for the extreme high end power users. This sucks because it’s an ergonomic nightmare to do everything on your phone, the walled garden approach of all major phones will greatly hasten everything being locked down, mobile browsers are trash and even though the majority of traffic comes through them web designers still ignore making sites work on mobile browsers, etc
Of course the anti corporatist narrative fits in well here: these companies are excited for this convergence because it shifts control away from the user. The pc by nature is an open platform and has to have some degree of openness to work with multiple hardware configurations and peripherals. The phone is consistent hardware (extremely so in apples case) and the precedent has long been set for locked down everything. at the same time the consumer eats this shit up despite tons of people yelling about it so maybe we deserve it. But convergence makes sense from a consumer perspective too; we can’t afford to buy a laptop, phone, and tablet.
It’s complete bollocks though, isn’t it?
I’ve had more or less every-other generation of Samsung foldables since the first one - all are still going fine with the exception of the very first (when I buy a new phone, I give the old one to friends or family.)
One of them even got dunked in wet concrete (unfortunately while in my pocket, also dunked head to toe in wet concrete, but that’s a long story.) After hosing it down and drying, it was fine.
It’s fine not to like foldables because you don’t actually want what they offer - but the technology is fine.
People of Lemmy are conservative, they get confused and scared of our modern world.
A folding phone isnt inherently unrepairable. Yes it is less durable but if you look some of them the only drawback is that the internal screen scratches easily and are otherwise very stable. Would i get a folding phone to use as a phone? No, but as a mini tablet it is extremely neat. And once again, as all devices, you can make them repairable. But yes they are more expensive but you know you dont have to buy them right? You know you could just buy a fairphone, put linux on it and use that for like 8 years or what the support is?
This writer clearly hasn’t been to China where we have had generations of foldables. The last two gens are amazing from all manufacturers. The latest Xiaomi 18 fold sold out in one day. Just the usual ignorant western point of view.
The reality is that Xiaomi fold 18 is doing the same as the very first folding phone. Meaning you have over-tempered glass that scratches from a fart & you have the mandatory plastic screen protector that is guaranteed to peel off within 3 years on a foldable. There are no material science breakthroughs here, they are just a bit ahead in hinge engineering & such.
Sure maybe people that are good at babying them or are very lucky can keep them in a working condition for a couple of years, but the concept itself is not great. At least i’m not a fan of plastic touch surfaces nor thick phones. I acknowledge that they are probably quite good for women who want to fit a full-size tablet in their ever so tiny tote bag, but that’s it.
I acknowledge that they are probably quite good for women who want to fit a full-size tablet in their ever so tiny tote bag, but that’s it.
Wow… how’s the RAM 3500 working out for you?
Agree to totally disagree.
I don’t get it. If a larger screen is so important to you, why not just use a tablet? They have tablets that are almost that small. It just seems like it’s not big enough to help with much that a tablet won’t do better. I know it’s an extra device, but I doubt most people REALLY need the extra screen space that badly, and if they REALLY do, a tablet would serve that need much better.
I really like the idea of a tri-fold phone running Nura that can revert to a tablet or desktop. It’s one device for multiple form factors, for different use cases.
9000 dolla dolla. Insert cash or select payment type.
