I just don't understand who wants these foldable phones, especially at the $1799 price point. I guess a use case is wealthy frequent travelers who don't want a separate device with a larger screen to watch movies/videos on the go? Someone help me out here.
I'm never going back. I only type and respond to things unfolded, I have big hands and the split keyboard + bigger buttons are great. Outside of that I'm a fairly big reader and I enjoy reading both articles and books unfolded and have no interest in bringing a second device to do so.
I also write notes with stylus on it which is practical unfolded. More real estate for video etc. And then I can just fold it and use it as a phone for calls.
Yeah reading the specs, it's s larger screen than my Nexus 7 tablet, with a smaller overall device size, and fits in my pocket.. it's tempting. But definitely pausing at a $1800 price tag
You have it reversed: it's not "we want to make a foldable phone, how expensive does it need to be?", it's "we want to ask $1800 for phone, what could we offer to find buyers".
The biggest problem in the market of exceptionally expensive phones is that they don't really look all that different from cheaper ones. Foldable phones solve that.
Yeah I think you're right. Phones have been pretty much the same since the first slab came out. I mean screen-size got bigger, DPI got higher, "stuff scrolls really smooth now!" These -- to me -- are just incremental changes to the same features from 2013 and aren't great motivators to drop the phone I have into the landfill and get a new one. It seems phone companies are casting about for a new gimmick.
Also true, but that's not what I meant: buyers not replacing the phone they have often enough is solved, battery decay and lack of updates. But there's not much that sets the $1000 replacement apart from the $300 replacement. A $1800 replacement? The market for a $1800 phone that is as obviously different from the rest as a foldable is many times bigger than the market for a $1800 phone that is just better somehow. My prediction is that unless some cheap newcomer brand shows up with a foldable, none of the established will ever make the first move and offer their foldable cheaper, no matter how low the actual cost might be.
If this was around the 1200 price point they'd be selling like crazy. Chewing into the premium android and iPhone share. Google would have been a trend setter with foldables if they offered a lower price.
My theory is Google doesn't want to be too competitive, they mainly want to enable the Android market. If they're too competitive, Samsung, Motorolo, Oppo, etc will change to a different base. Google benefits from Android anyway by its embedded core of Google services.
However, I think with the -a series (7a, etc) they've turned to filling a gap with a reasonably priced high quality device, because Samsung &c low priced handsets are really terrible.
Perhaps there will be a Pixel Fold Express (a) or some other moniker for a value-focused foldable that's more easily attainable for the masses? I'm trying to think how much money I'd need to make a year where dropping $1,700 on a device with a 3 year lifespan makes sense. I'm thinking I'd need to be an executive that works around the clock before I could justify that expense. Everyone has different values of course.
Exactly. Have a barebones screen on the front or no screen at all, and make it cheaper. I get that they want it to be premium, but it doesn't need an expensive high-refresh OLED screen for both screens!
I have a note 10+ and the stylus is a game changer, I would like a wider screen for taking notes but can't justify the cost. Also my note is nearly 4 years old and showing no sign of slowing down or battery issues.
No sign of battery issues is huge, I'm still rocking my 3 year old Pixel 3a and recently replaced the battery, it was a night and day difference. General slowness/lack of responsiveness, half day battery life. Been like that with all my other smart phones since 2013. Would love my next phone to go on year 4 with no sign of battery degradation (although in lieu of that I'll take an easy to replace battery).
Are you saying that replacing the battery improved your phone's responsiveness? I knew there was a throttling thing with iPhones but hadn't heard of anything outside of that.
Samsung, OnePlus, and other phone manufacturers have all been accused of throttling phones and have acknowledged the throttling and/or released patches to give more user control. You can google "<manfacturer name> throttling" and get new reports of throttling as recently as last year for Samsung.
Blame bad Samsung fab. Things like the Qualcomm 888 chipset were notorious for overheating like crazy requiring throttling (used in both Samsung and some Oneplus devices). Need TSMC. Apple had issues all the way back to like 6S era when they sourced from both and the TSMC ones just ran better.
You can override it with a custom rom and messing with EFS on those devices but it's already flirting with battery dangerous temps doing gaming. Better to buy TSMC or strap an icepack to the phone lol.
My wife's Nexus 6 would only play games at what appeared to be 2 fps unless hooked to a charger after three years. And those were just some 2D puzzle games, not COD, so I imagine other 2D apps were not running at full speed too but it was extremely apparent on games.
A degraded battery can't deliver as much power as a new battery and for your phone to feel fast you have big cores to boost to over 3 GHz which requires a relatively high voltage. These voltages aren't possible with a degraded battery and that's why your phone feels slower.
The voltage range of aged batteries is the same as the day they leave the factory. Or it could be even larger if the BMS is set up to sacrifice a little nominal capacity für lower wear when new, slowly widening the range as capacity decays. The temporary voltage drop while drawing a large current will be bigger on an older battery, that much is true. But that would still be a smaller delta than the one between fully charged and not at any age. If there's performance difference, I'd expect it to be from deliberately yearning performance/runtime trade-offs (which arguably are better to have than not have)
If your Lithium Ion batteries are at 1.3V they are way beyond their service life.
Normal voltage range for Li Ion is 2.5 to 4.2V, nominal voltage is 3.7V, some manufacturers recommend you never discharge them lower than 3V. So something is off or you have your battery chemistries mixed up.
This is typically specified in open circuit voltage. Under load, lithium ion batteries can get to VERY low voltages due to internal resistance. 2.0V is not uncommon.
I've built a bunch of Lithium Ion packs (nothing huge, the largest was 10 KWh, but still you don't want to mess that up, that's 1000 cells in a 40S25P arrangement), none of them go that low under load. If your cells drop down to 2.0V under load that's not a normal condition, either you are discharging your cell at more than the 2C or so that is normally specc'd (which you are welcome to do but it will cost you in lifespan) or the cell is on the way out. The normal arrangement for high current discharge is to simply set up more cells in parallel so they all carry only a fraction of the current and stay well below the maximum permissible current.
One application where cells are loaded up really heavily is in RC toys and drones, there lifespan is secondary to performance. But a normal, long-life application for a Lithium Ion battery pack will ensure that batteries are not overloaded (either during charge or discharge).
There are also special cells that can gracefully handle high discharge current (and usually correspondingly high charge currents) typically at the price of some capacity for a given volume.
You'd be surprised the peak current demand of modern smartphones. AVERAGE current demand (not peak) of a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 can hit 16W for short periods of time. At 3V, that's 5+ amps out of the battery. Worse if you account for efficiency, and even worse if you account for other power draws such as camera, display, etc etc. Running at 3-4C for short bursts is not out of the question.
That I readily believe. But in a well designed system (designed for longevity) you'd never see such discharge currents in a sustained manner and even short bursts are better served by capacitors (charged at a lower constant current) close to the consumer than by batteries. And that's why you'll see voltage regulators and large banks of capacitors right next to the CPU (besides compensation for line losses and stability of the supply, which with rapid wide load variations would cause all kinds of problems for the logic).
But in for instance a vehicle or an e-bike you'd rarely see batteries drained faster than the spec, not if you want to use your expensive device for a while.
Keep in mind, when I say 'short bursts', I mean on the time scale of seconds. No capacitor bank is going to be capable of supplying current for that long; especially not one put in a phone. In most cases, the restriction is inevitably heat based (how long can I run this before thermals cause me to need to throttle) and the power supply is pushed to be able to handle it.
EV batteries and e-bikes are a whole different animal than what is used in cell phone battery tech.
Also, is 2.0V bad for the battery? It's not great, but it's not Voc of 2.0V. It's Vsc, essentially. Which is a very different quantity.
How do you feel about the lack of security updates? I miss the smaller size of the 3a bit upgraded since they stopped shipping software updates. I'm hoping you can talk me in to resurrecting it.
YMMV may vary a lot with LineageOS, unfortunately.
I was a big fan, but:
- Nexus 5X support was terminated
- Pixel 1 support is broken; the device used to reset daily (works fine with the original OS)
- They have at least one serious open issue (GPS not functioning, although it can be worked around)
In the end, I had to buy a new phone, that is officially supported. I still donate, but I don't hold my hopes high anymore, anytime that a device gets out of official support.
Is there a place that has empirical data on this stuff? Like what battery factoids are still true with the latest devices or not?
I would honestly love for phone manufacturers to outright build in some software to build in best practices if they actually exist. Don't let me charge to 100% at first or something!
AccuBattery is an Android app that gives battery usage statistics and more detailed readouts from the OS w/r/t battery condition and charge/discharge behavior.
Their help portal has a research summary explaining their sources (the most recent of which is from 2010, so battery tech has likely improved in some respects but it's still a useful reference point): https://accubattery.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/210224725-...
I don't believe Apple has released empirical data, but Apple has optimized phone charging built into recent versions of iOS (Settings > Battery > Battery Health and Charging). It will stop at 80% and then resume charging to 100% about an hour before you start using your phone every day. iOS tracks your daily habits to determine the start of your day.
In the most recent iOS versions, if it can determine when "clean energy" is available near your location, it will also try to charge only during those time periods. I don't think any 3rd party has determined if it is effective.
This feature exists in Macbooks too, but it's useless to me - it never works because apparently my usage pattern doesn't convince the smart system to limit charging, and it gives me no manual control whatsoever. I think I'd have to always keep charging the laptop for it to kick in.
Just gimme a slider that lets me tell it to only charge to 80% and be done with it.
At least some Android devices have the same, it keys off your alarm if you have one set. My Pixel 6 Pro will also take advantage of chargers' ability to supply different amounts of power to not charge as quickly as it's physically capable of doing if it thinks I've put it on charge for the night.
My iPhone 12 mini spends 95% of its life on a MagSafe charger and has never charged to 80% after a year with this setting enabled. I wish Apple would add an explicit option like "Protect Battery" on Samsung devices.
One way to slow down the aging of batteries is to charge them only up to 80%, but this is not the only factor that affects their lifespan. Other factors include the temperature of the environment, the power consumption, and the quality of the battery materials and manufacturing process, which may be hard or impossible to know before buying.
You'd be better served by leaving power save mode on all the time (No haptic touch or animated UI) and minimize brightness to extend the intervals between charging.
I've seen the longevity graphs for lithium ion (don't know about other chemistries, but there's still a lot of lithium ion around). Ability to retain charge drops off faster if the battery is kept fully charged, especially in warm temperatures.
My electric car by default only charges to 80% unless you tell it you're planning a long drive in order to conserve battery life.
The quadcopter community has dig up research on the longevity of lipo batteries under different charge levels. Note that they do push their batteries really hard. Their findings apply as long as the latest devices still set 4.2V as 100%.
Went from a Note 8 to iPhone. Lack of stylus bugs me all the time. One of my favourite features was being able to hover over foreign language words and it would translate them, even if the word was in image or a button on an application.
On iOS if you wanted to translate the text on a button you have to take a screen capture, then translate the screen capture.
This was possible partly because of the stylus hover feature, but also because the Android permission model allowed for applications (translation service) to 'see' the screen of other applications. Something I don't think iOS allows.
If you enjoy using foreign apps, learning languages or living in an area with a different language the Samsung Note series was fantastic.
Happy to help! iOS has a few built-in ways of translating text that generally involve long pressing and hitting translate from the menu or selecting the text, tapping the selected text, and hitting translate in the menu. If you select measurements, unit conversion is also in this menu.
However, every way involves the text being [selectable] text and not something like an image (unless you use your method). And you said button, and I am not positive if a long-press will trigger the press event.
I use a Fold 4, which technically doesn't either, but Samsung provides a sort of dumb stylus that works pretty well plus case for some small additional amount. I imagine Google can do something similar.
The Fold 4 stylus is Wacom, not a "dumb" capacitive stylus if that is what you mean (unless you specifically bought that). Maybe you meant no recharging needed?
I was mostly talking about in contrast to the pro styluses that seem to have broader utility like a clicker, gestures and whatnot. I agree that this is not a capacitive stylus, I don't believe the writing fidelity and lack of lag would be nearly as good.
You don't necessarily need one to come with the phone; there are third-party stylus(es?), and as long as you have a decent way to store it in your pocket or on the the case, it's still handy.
What part isn't true? I didn't claim that it would satisfy everyone, just that it might come in handy for some people. Having done this myself, I can confirm that the set of people that I claim exist is in fact non-empty.
yeah lack of stylus is a killer for me - I would use the samsung one instead just due to that. hoping this spurs Samsung to make their next version even more compelling and also ensures Google mainlines all the OS support for foldable phones - and then I can get a foldable with a stylus.
I'm posting this from my Galaxy Z Fold 3. I'm not particularly wealthy or a frequent traveler. I bought this phone used for 750 bucks in Canada and my main use case for the screen real-estate is reading manga on it, which it excels at. It also then serves as a phone and a media in bed machine. It is fragile and I take good care of it but it is absolutely the most innovative and exciting phone I've had the pleasure of using so far. I'm excited for the future of foldables and hope the next generation of the pixel fold will bring more serious competition to Samsung's lineup!
Early adopters always have this experience: expensive products, with issues preventing mass-adoption, with uncertain vendor support in the long term.
I'm not sure whether foldable phones will become what everyone uses, but this is typical for new products that have not started zipping up the S curve.
Dunno if they'll become ubiquitous, but I think various foldable forms will at least stick around as a viable market segment. Most early-ish adopters I know from the zFold and zFlip 3 generation are planning to get another when it's time to upgrade. Granted that's a biased sample of like 5% of the people I know IRL, but still it's not too common to see that much agreement after a year+ of use for a product that's just a gimmick.
Lots of great technology like indoor plumbing and electric lighting started as playthings for the rich. Early adopters serve a useful purpose for everyone.
Not sure about the Fold 3, but the Flip 3 has been surprisingly durable for me. Dropped it multiple times getting out of Uber, fell off desk onto hardwood floor, etc. never with a case on and most recently without even the plastic screen protector.
I thought for sure when I first bought it I'd have to be super careful about the hinge but by now I'm constantly opening it and closing it during the day (though not quite jerked around like an old school flip phone).
I'm amazed at how perfectly it still works almost 2 years later for me, I made a point of keeping my old pixel phone instead of trading it in when I made the upgrade because I was so worried the Flip wouldn't last.
Definitely going to be getting another Flip when I do upgrade again, unless maybe Google launches its own version of that configuration.
Can confirm that the screen real estate makes reading comics of all kind amazing.
I usually do so on my tablet, but before tablets were a thing, I was reading comics on my various touchscreen phones. Pinch to zoom: Mandatory.
I prefer cheaper android phones. My requirements for a general purpose computer in my pocket were long ago exceeded. Reading comics on the go is fine with a phone, better with a tablet (of which I have several, the most expensive one being still cheaper than the cost of the new Pixel Fold even when you add in the cost of my work phone and personal phones).
Computing power is so cheap these days, I am a big fan of just having one-off devices on the cheap. My new Kali Linux box? A $50 refurb Chromebook. Let's not screw with multi-boot shenanigans if we don't have to.
I really don't need a do-everything device. I think most people don't either, they just want one.
It's absolutely overpriced considering I think Samsung has better offerings at that price point (which I think are equally ovepriced). I think fierce competition will bring the price of this emerging form factor down in the long term. That said, I am loving the device and will not hesitate to pay some more to trade it in for a next gen device when they come out. I'm not interested in returning to a slab phone at the moment after habing gotten a taste of the Fold.
Fierce competition, and dropping production costs for the tech.
I am old enough to remember when your average laptop was several thousand dollars, much of the cost of which was due to the LCD display. My daily-driver laptop in college I bought used for like $900 in 2001 (a Toshiba Tecra 780-DVD), but originally all the kit I bought with it would have run close to $6,000.
There are plenty of people who don't use a (desktop/laptop) computer outside of their jobs. If you're on HN, you're probably not one of them, so it can be difficult to imagine their behaviours.
For example, in Japan, 36.6% of teenagers say they don't use PC at home [1]. It's also a country where people read a lot of comics. Now these foldable screens make more sense, right.
Some of them do, of course. iPhone's market share is ~65% in Japan. If they successfully marketed it as an "iPhone + iPad in your pocket", $2k would not be an unimaginable price. And there will be more affordable foldable phones when they're more adopted.
But of course this one is from Google so it doesn't enjoy Apple's branding premium.
It's sometimes a way to say "can somebody explain the pros and cons" -I don't get an air fryer (for instance) said so, and an aficionado explained the Ps and Cs to me.
Now I just say "doesn't do anything for my style of cooking"
I also don’t understand who would have wanted a 4 inch then a 5 inch then 6 then 7 and maybe 8 inches phones while their palms remained exactly of the same size. Sometimes I feel people just want weird shit. And yeah new things. Just “new” things - otherwise Apple’s non-upgrade upgrade phones will go unsold.
I feel the trend to bigger phones is probably indicative of phones being the sole computing device for more and more people. Anecdotal, but one example is my parents. I've watched them go from having desktops to laptops to iPads while they kept getting the biggest iPhone available. Now, their phones are pretty much all they use (outside of a smart TV and an Amazon Echo).
My parents and all their peers (born early 60s or before) have the biggest phone they can buy because they have the font size set to the largest setting.
The vast majority of the population doesn't need the kind of computing beast they are using, but it is what gets sold to them. Everybody in society gets a phone and the vast majority of them are technologically illiterate, it's absurd to think that organic demand directs direction in the phone market.
It's more than the price of a nice smartphone, and a nice tablet.
An iPhone 14 and iPad Pro are gonna' run you $1,600, and be more useful in most cases.
I mean, sure, you're not going to fit an iPad in your pocket, but do you really need to? And when it's out, it's more productive to have a separate tablet and phone, than just one device that's trying to do it all.
Folding phones are a neat idea, and as a technical achievement, this is impressive. But in terms of price and practicality? I don't really see the appeal or value.
I, on the other hand, can't see a single reason why somebody would want a tablet. We've had some, and they all ended up forgotten in a drawer. Either I'm in a place where I have whatever limited portability I can (so I use the phone) or I have a laptop with proper keyboard, applications and OS.
On the other hand, I always have my phone with me and I'd definitely benefit for a larger screen when reading emails, websites, documents, planning trips or whatever.
That said, I would never pay that kind of price, neither for a foldable, nor for an iPhone so I guess I'm out of that market niche anyway.
I travel a lot for both business and personal (nomadding 7 months a year). I never turn on the TV while I’m at the hotel on business by myself. I watch from my iPad. It’s my only “personal” computer. When I occasional need to be “productive”, I use my wireless mouse and keyboard from my computer and pair them to my iPad.
Finally, it’s also part of my three monitor setup for my laptop. The other is a portable USB C powered monitor.
I have an iPad for note-taking at school and literally don't use it for anything else. In fact it's out of battery most of the time I pick it up. My Samsung fold is just so much more versatile and I hse it for media consumption most people without a foldable hse a tablet for.
Sigh, Really? You're obviously not an artist then, many of my friends and I have already replaced our Wacom dedicated tablets with an iPad with the pro pencil.
Jokes aside, I never found the bed to be comfortable for any kind of content consumption, even reading books is annoying. And when I already sit upright I might as well have a keyboard too.
> And when it's out, it's more productive to have a separate tablet and phone, than just one device that's trying to do it all.
Not convinced. Having to move back and forth between two devices is a pain. Just like how a powerful laptop with a docking station is much nicer than a cheap laptop and a desktop, even if the former costs more.
> Having to move back and forth between two devices is a pain.
I do that a couple times a day. Almost everything that I do with these devices stays in sync through various accounts/cloud in the background. Admittedly I'm just doing this at home, but when I travel, I pretty much always bring my iPad (in addition to the iPhone and my Apple Watch which are on me as long as I'm dressed and awake). I don't have it set this way at the moment, but you can even have any app that you install automatically get added to the other device.
It's very different than a typical laptop/desktop situation since those are harder to sync (depending on what OS/apps/files/etc are involved). However if a lot of what you do is in the cloud, then maybe switching between laptop and desktop is more fluid.
These things always cost more at first, so I agree that it's "overpriced" for the value it brings. That said, I think the practicality is that it provides all of the value of a phone and a tablet in a single device that fits in your pocket. It's a fairly large leap in the ever-growing list of other devices that smartphones are replacing.
I also like to think that long-term maybe they will have the ability to fold out along more than one dimension and potentially be dramatically larger than this, but that's just dreaming at this point.
I've gotten a lot of value out of my fold 4, especially in spontaneous situations where I don't have a tablet or my notebook at hand. Pull out my phone, snap a picture, then annotate. Or just pull it out and draw to try and get a concept across. Reading or watching videos, sharing an image, or whatever. And I Always have it with me, because I always have my phone with me. I don't carry around my laptop everywhere, and I've never purchased a tablet.
> Folding phones are a neat idea, and as a technical achievement, this is impressive. But in terms of price and practicality? I don't really see the appeal or value.
I thought that was the consensus... It surprises me that Google is investing money on such a device. Weird.
Folding phones have some good use cases like video/photo/music editing, desktop publishing, word processing, and probably some other things I can't think of. However, those are all great things to do on a tablet or laptop. The foldable phones seem to be the next evolution of the phablet design but those didn't exactly sell well. Although the reason those didn't sell well was because of how big they are, a foldable gives you the package of a phone but the screen size larger than a phablet. Do you need to do all of these editing/publishing tasks on the go and don't want to carry any more than a portable keyboard? A foldable might be for you. Google just doesn't want to miss out on the potential market. Will they continue to sell? Honestly who knows. Carrying around such an expensive device like you would your phone seems risky but I'm probably not the market for these devices. Google is just looking to make sure that Samsung doesn't corner the market even if its just a fad.
With Apple bringing Final Cut and Logic to the iPad, they can cut further into the "creative on-the-go" market without having to bother creating a foldable and just leverage their existing tech.
The price is not going to be that high in 5 years, and when the price becomes comparable with the latest iPhone that's going to have the potential to flip a totally different market segment to Android than would've previously considered it.
There are also multiple ways to use the folding screen tech, they can make phone with normal size unfolded screen and small folded form factor instead. Women's pocket sizes alone can sell a lot of those, and there's definitely a nostalgia market for e.g. the razr form factor too.
Consensus on what? That having a phone that can switch into a tablet whenever you want it to, no more having multiple devices for the same thing and convenience is what people want?
If you use your phone an average of 5 hours a day for two years and then throw it in a junk drawer the hardware would cost less than 50cents per hour of use. I use my $800 iPhone about 30 minutes a day, keep it for 4 years, and spend about $1 per hour of use.
I'd say the market is heavy cellphone users that use apps that benefit from the larger screen.
> If you use your phone an average of 5 hours a day for two years and then throw it in a junk drawer the hardware would cost less than 50cents per hour of use.
I don't understand this type of justification.
My fridge would cost around $65k for a 15 year lifetime at $0.50/hour.
It just seems like a completely meaningless way to judge the value of something.
They're hoping to sell to you based on the value it provides rather than the cost to produce the thing.
Classic sales reframing tactic for obscene 500%+ margin products: You should buy this thing far above market rate because it's worth a lot to you, not because it's priced at a realistic BOM + labor + reasonable profit margin.
The point is not to judge sticker price as an absolute or as percentage of your annual salary, say.
It's to judge it based on the value it gives you per unit of time.
It's the entire justification for investing less in things you use less, and investing more in things you use more. That we generally receive benefits not in one-offs but spread out over time.
It's completely missing a huge part of the equation though: comparison to cheaper options.
Something might not sound so expensive if you frame it as $0.50/hour of use. But it certainly does if there's an alternative that meets your needs that you can get for $0.10/hour of use.
10p? based on p I think you're in the UK? what kinda coffee is that?here a 3rd wave coffee costs around 42-50 CHF for a kilo and you need 18g for an espresso, so 0.756-0.9 CHF per espresso if I calculate 0 for amortization of equipment.
I've never done this arithmetic before. With a massively inefficient usage of a french-press, I get something like three cups of coffee from a press and perhaps 7 fillings of the press from a bag from my local store. That coffee is $6 USD when it's on sale and $8 when it's not.
Neglecting the cost of the $20 press, the water, the kettle, the rinse-water, the mug, and the heating of the water, that's about $0.33 USD / cup?
A translation service from Swedish to German has no practical value to me. But, I don't go on the internet dissing Google for providing that service to people who find it useful
hi, I want these folding phones. Though I took advantage of the ridiculous trade in offers that Samsung usually promotes with. Everything is just nicer on the bigger screen: messaging, browsing, videos, gaming. And that screen is always in my pocket. Can't read the QR code menu at the restaurant? Here, look at my pocket tablet.
The technology is still in an awkward phase but I think slab phones will be obsolete in 5 years
I think the idea behind the folding form factor is that you don't have to lug it around, since it's in the same shape as a regular phone whenever you're not using it (and I don't think people consider having a phone in their pocket "lugging it around").
as a person who has daily driven a fold for almost 2 years the "crease" is a complete non-problem when you are using it. its mostly just people who havent actually used it that complain about it because they heard some influencer complaining about it or they saw a picture someone took of it with a studio light blasting down on it at the perfect angle.
Nothing to do with "influencers", but yes I haven't really used it. My opinion was formed from watching other people's phones who have this and deciding I don't like it, and I'm not prepared to change phones to give it a try on the off chance that I mind not find it an issue.
Totally agree, especially for the restaurant menu use case even if it's niche. I can have a regular phone walking around folded and just unfold whem I sit down and am ready to consume any kind of media.
Agreed on the high costs. That said, I am very happy with my flip. Smaller pocket footprint, and far fewer accidental unlocks now. (That is, my phone used to unlock with me just putting hands in pocket. Very annoying.)
Also feels good to "close" the phone. In ways that locking doesn't quite reach.
Personally I love my overpriced Samsung z fold, I don't use a laptop anymore (just a desktop), I can easily read double-column research articles wherever I am, it's great for drawing diagrams, and all of that without having to remember both your phone and a tablet everywhere you go.
I'm really perplexed too especially since the crease is still so visibile and the build quality so weak.
I feel like carrying small phone and a tablet/laptop is still a significantly better value any way you look at it unless you travel a lot without any storage on your human. I found the most ergonomic travel setup for me is a Lenovo Yoga laptop and the small samsung s22. Both of which can be bought for less than 1800$.
I had bought a tablet but I rarely bring it outside of home except longer trip. Even if I bring it, it's annoying to take out from my bag for a short time use. I finally bought Fold3 and I put it on my pocket everyday. Having it 100% of time is too useful for everything. Crease is too minor problem than that.
It's "good" for everything on the go if you can handle the bulk of it folded. I've got an iPhone 14 pro and a Galaxy fold 3. It's roughly the size of an iPad mini when unfolded and is my favorite form factor. Small enough to carry around and enough real estate to RDP or SSH to get some actual work done if you need to.
I don't like carrying a bag with my MacBook if I can avoid it
Eventually all phones will be like that and the price point adjusted for inflation will be comparable to what normal phones cost now. So this is just a way for you to get a device from the future by paying a premium, or alternatively you can just wait.
An iphone was also amazing unique and expensive when it first came out. But by todays standards - a $100 android phone is both more powerful and a lot cheaper.
I am currently carrying an iPhone and an iPad Mini. The iPad is to read the newspaper, to watch photo/video, and in cases I need to do real multitasking (i.e. make notes about a PDF, so I want both on my screen at once).
If I could have both in one device, that'd be awesome.
So far however (besides the fact that only Android has foldables), the very visible crease is a dealbreaker for me.
> the very visible crease is a dealbreaker for me.
That's what I thought too, but after speaking with a Samsung Fold something owner, and testing it for some time, it's mostly visible only in some angles. Also I imagine it's like notches and holes, you get used and forget about them.
Just like many people still don't understand why people have Kindles. They would think -- you can read books on phones, many of which are as large as 6.7 inches? Or Why not get an iPad or iPad mini, and you can do so many more things on it? So on and on. (I have two kindles and I don't personally know anyone who has a kindle. But that is fine.)
You could have said the same about the transition from featurephones to smartphones, why would people pay 3 times the price for a battery that barely lasts a day, my 2" screen is more than enough to read my texts, etc... And yet here we are
Only option right now is a Lenovo Y700. Not OLED, but it has a great looking 120 Hz screen, fast processor, and premium feel. However, it only comes in a Chinese version, so I ended up creating "unsecure" networks and accounts (Youtube, Reddit, etc) to use with it.
I've a Galaxy Fold 3 and now 4 for about 2 years now. It is my biggest cellphone QOL improvement since the Pixel mainstreamed AI photography in the first pixel.
I don't feel it's absurd.
For every product in the market there is a luxury version for people who's insensitive to price (hello LVHM!)... except for phones.
If you have all the money in the world the most expensive / exclusive phone you can get is an iPhone, Samsung Fold, or this Pixel Fold.
>“Vertu has changed hands lots of over the past decade, but is still being run by a bunch of folks based out of Hong Kong, very close to the Chinese supply chain,” says Neil Shah of Counterpoint Research. “These folks with renewed focus are rebadging existing models from brands—ZTE, for example—with luxury materials and advanced hardware and software.”
As I understand it, the phone is just the thing you plonk down on the table that says "I'm megarich". The true functionality is in the service, imagine having a voice assistant that can do anything - we're closer to that than ever before with AI but Vertu users have had it for years using real humans.
I met a guy once who got sent to Dubai for a week and his only job was to visit all the places a wealthy person might want to go to, while carrying a Vertu phone in his bag. They wanted to check signal strength.
Just because you are wealthy, does not mean you want to be inconvenienced. Especially to the degree that not using a modern iOS/Android device would inconvenience you.
There’s a million ways to show off you are rich that would not result in you wasting your time.
The folding bit has no value to me, but even if it did, that price point is unacceptable. A phone is something I carry every day and don't treat like a delicate flower. If it costs so much that losing or breaking it would bring financial pain in addition to the pain of the loss of the phone, it's not suitable for my needs.
That said, I'm being overly cautious because I've never actually lost or broken a phone.
That's the thing. My current phone (Pixel 4) was something like $700 when I first bought it, and the idea of breaking it was pretty scary for me, for something I carry around with me everywhere, every day. It's been a while since I've broken a phone, but it's happened, and my wallet was not pleased about the experience.
I don't have a tablet and wouldn't want one as a dedicated device, but I could absolutely see myself using the tablet features of the Pixel Fold, given that I wouldn't be carrying around an extra device, and it's pocket-sized when folded up. (I usually read a book on my phone when on transit, for example, and would love to be able to do that on a larger screen.) But carrying around a $1800 device that's as easily breakable as a phone? I think I'd be too anxious for that.
I love my Samsung ZFlip4, which feels much more like the old flip phones, but it also has a smaller screen on the outside with a few handy functions that keep my from having to unfold it. The form factor is just so comfortable and fits wonderfully in my pockets, including my breast pockets.
I like to read comics and I’m too lazy to bring tablet with me. I am thinking about buying foldable.
That said, not at this price point and with Pixels not known for their hardware quality. Maybe I’ll wait for when Apple inevitably does their foldable.
If it has an M3 chip and stuff like iMovie seems to work fine. Or it's the only driver for the VR glasses that are coming, or wirelessly connect to certain monitors.. It may be a "new class" of device.
I have a Surface Duo phone. Using both screens together is like using a tablet, but it folds up and fits in my pocket. I can have the keyboard on one screen and have a full display on the other. I can look something up on one screen while using something else on the other screen.
By comparison, the standard of "splitting" a single screen results in something that is often too small and awkward to use and with too little screen space for comfortable viewing.
At $1800, they aren't really pretending it isn't a niche product. I'd rather they were messing around trying to make a big screen in a small package than not.
Me! I want one so bad. I just can’t get out of Apple’s jail ecosystem :( I think if the next iPhone doesn’t come out with a fold model I’m finally going to switch back to Android.
Why: I read a lot (pdf, not epubs) and I watch videos a lot.
I carried one of these when I was at Google (needed it for my job there). When I was using it by myself casually I almost never unfolded it. But when I wanted to see more detail in a photo or wanted to show someone a YouTube video it was invaluable to be able to unfold it for the temporary larger screen.
>I just don't understand who wants these foldable phones
The problem is that they're using the wrong fold. I want my screen to EXTEND outwards. I don't want to go from one screen to open yet another screen. I want it to intuitively either extend, or allow me to fold OUT my content, not in.
I bought an original Surface Duo last year for $350. For the price it was a really investing phone. The proper dual screen is actually really handy, I don't think I'd find it nearly as useful with a single foldable display that is effectively a worse tablet.
In addition to being very expensive, it also seems like you can't get a case on it. And they probably don't have much texture on the outside to give a good grip. Bad grip + bad protection = keep some savings in case you wreck it.
Anyone who wants the functionality of tablets, but doesn't want to carry an extra thing everywhere. I'd pay easily $3000 for a foldable with a good pencil and a good CAD app. Right now, the only such device is the ipad with shapr3d.
You could say the same thing about any >$200 phone, or any new device at all: gadgets are luxury devices, and there's no upper price for the luxury sector.
Besides, if this lasts at least 4 years then the amortised price is more reasonable.
I'd happily use a Fold if it cost ~half as much. Size doesn't matter that much in pocket for me; and it looks convenient when actually using the device.
I may consider them at a much lower price-point and if they were much thinner, so not anytime soon :)
My ideal is the Westworld style tablet, but that's sci-fi.
My combo is an iPhone 12 Pro Max and a cellular Apple Watch. My phone isn’t on me when I want sone distraction free time - gym, running, watching TV with my wife, etc.
1. Nice to watch youtube videos on, which I do a lot. Both in portrait and landscape. I watch a lot of linus tech tips, photography videos, breadtube, and mandarin learning videos on it. I wouldn't buy it for this alone.
2. Really excellent emulation device. Powerful enough hardware and phenomenal screen. I use it as-is in portrait mode for the best possible DS emulation on-the-go. I can at least 4x the resolution in almost all games. I can also slap a gamesir controller thing on either side to turn it into a sort of switch-style emulation device. I play ps2, ds, 3ds, gba, gamecube, n64, snes, and nes games on it.
3. Good game streaming device. Mount the controllers on it and use moonlight or steam link to stream from my desktop PC, even if I'm not on local network. Or, use nvidia geforce now or whatever it's called. There's a separate link to servers here in Taiwan through taiwan dageda, so I get ridiculously good connection.
4. Pretty good note taking device with the stylus. This is the use case that drove me to purchase. I'm always experimenting with various ways of (handwritten) note taking, especially on books I read, and having all my notes right there on my phone is really, really nice. I never "forget my notebook" now. Well, unless I forget the stylus lol, or it falls out of my pocket, which has happened 3 times now, and the styluses are an absurd like 50$ or something, so, this device is not nearly ready for mainstream consumption. Similarly, it's great for banging out quick engineering diagrams or designs. I can export to image and throw directly on a ticketing system, or upload into slack. Nice flow, if I get a question from a junior when I'm on a train or whatever.
5. Reading books is very nice on it.
6. Using music-making apps, especially ones with piano rolls and keyboards, is phenomenal. I really wish it had an aux plug though. The jellyphone 2 has that and is the size of a pill bottle, and has dual sim and removable SD storage. No excuses. Although, my version of the galaxy fold 3 does have dual sim.
7. The width of the screen when folded is actually usable on my smaller hands. This was another big driver for getting it. Hilariously, my initial reason for looking for my next phone was, I was tired of big phones, and wanted one I could actually use one handed. Funnily enough the narrow width (that so many people complain about) of the galaxy zfold3 was a big selling point for me.
8. Using maps is really nice on it, and I'm doing this constantly because we're always exploring Taiwan.
In all, I don't think I'm down to drop another 1.8k (1.4 for me because I got it on contract) on a phone any time in the near future. When this phone bites the bullet (and the inner screen is already "tightening" and reducing the flatness of the unfolded state, so one of these days I'm sure I'll overextend and crack the thing) I'm going to get a nice small android something, I heard the Asus zenfone 9 is a good size at a fair price.
As cool as all the features are, it's not like I have all THAT much time to game or make music on my phone, and worse case, I can just toss the thing into my plane-toys bag when I have flights or whatever. The notes taking feature I still use occasionally, especially for diagrams, but I've since moved to a onyx boox e-ink tablet for that, mostly because this lets me hand-write annotate epubs, a feature I've wanted on a device for like, 15 years lol.
So, after ~1 year of using the galaxy zfold 3, I can say, it was worth the money ONLY because it fulfilled like 8 usecases for me. Take away even a couple of those and there's no way it's worth it. A better alternative would be a jellyphone or pixel + a small affordable android tablet in the bag with a stylus. Spend the remaining on a previous version op1 or opz if you're really into music making, or a steam deck if you're really into gaming. Or shit both lmao, you're right that 1.8k is an insane amount of money.
Edit: looking through the marketing material, I'm not seeing any stylus usage on the pixel version. Even if a stylus would technically work, if the responsiveness and sensitivity doesn't allow for note taking, this thing doesn't make any sense to me. On the samsung foldables, the responsiveness of note taking with the stylus beat out literally every other device I've ever tried it with. It is phenomenal.
