by seec | 2025-09-14 15:02:15+00:00
Why would I stop arguing if I like it? Why even be here otherwise?

I have various Samsung foldables in hand, yes. I am definitely impressed by how far they have gotten but it doesn't change the fundamentals.

The flip style is just plain dumb. External display is almost useless and you need to open it to do anything useful. They are smaller when closed but also thicker which just aggravates the bulk at the bottom of your pocket when regular sized phones were fine thickness and heigh wise; and the weight is about the same. For all those compromises you just get a longer screen, which is stupid since the primary mode of interaction is scrolling. Increasing height without increasing width in proportion is useless, you can just fit more stuff vertically that were already convenient to scroll through.

Foldables have more practicality since the external screen is often fully featured and can be used like a regular phone. But that's not a very strong argument since that's what is asked from any basic smartphone, down to the dirt-cheap ones. When open they have decent usefulness at first glance but nowhere near enough to make up for the compromises they require of you. The aspect ratio is always fucked up in order to maintain the external display viability. Even for basic stuff like watching videos, they have a bigger screen for sure but a big part of it goes unexploited. For many typical apps they don't make good use of the larger area because those apps are optimized for scrolling since that's the primary way of managing content for all smartphones (this is very similar to the bigger area in bigger phones that just go to waste for displaying white space, except worse). The "killer" feature is supposed to be multitasking, which for sure they are definitely better at than regular phones. Except the primary limitation for multitasking on phones isn't just the display size. You still have to rely on softwares that are made for quick interactions with a lot of space used for touch target so it is usable with your fingers. There is no hover state and all inputs are made for ease of use primarily, not efficient workflow. Typing can be better at the expense of a large display area for it which largely defeats the purpose of a bigger display. If you were in need of productivity, it makes no sense to still be slowed down by inefficient input and lackluster software. At this point you might as well carry a tablet with a keyboard or a small laptop, if you are going to have enough downtime that this is a reasonable expectation the immediacy of something that you can get out of your pocket isn't very relevant. What's more, because of physical constraint their battery life just sucks. They need to be thin to even be viable, so you end up with less space for batteries because a lot of it is used for the displays and mechanism, yet they consume more power because of the bigger display. So, even for a use case I can get behind like reading, they end up giving you less. You have more space but with a bad aspect ratio and you just end up killing the battery faster compromising the phone viability for the other stuff a phone is useful for in everyday life. You are promised more but in practice you just get less.

When Jobs announced and showed how the iPhone worked, I knew right away they had found the correct recipe. That's because I was using a Windows Mobile "smartphone" at this point and I had experienced first-hand how bad it was in practice at most things. It required stylus input most of the time, creating too much friction for most quick interactions that you require from something living in your pocket. The breakthrough of the iPhone wasn't the hardware; it was the careful design of the software around it that allowed fast and easy interaction for most useful things (even the way you would be able to navigate in desktop class web page before website became fully mobile was quite good). It cames at the cost of functionality and efficiency in the software but that was exactly what made it viable as a pocketable device.

Foldables reintroduce friction while only offering minor benefits that are still worse than something like an iPad Mini that wouldn't add much more friction (instead of having it in your pocket, you need to carry in a small bag) but provide a better experience for basically everything.

There is also the unavoidable problem of the crease (the annoying reflections/diffraction it creates) and the worse feeling/experience of a display that isn't glass covered. To top it off, you end up with durability problems that are plaguing the whole category and aren't solvable unless they come with some glass that would basically be magic considering the science on that.

The reality is that foldables are fundamentally flawed and there is no amount of technical refinement that will change that. To keep the typical smartphone usefulness, you need to compromise the tablet experience and vice-versa. They end up being worse at both use cases while not even saving you money. This fact actually should actually tell you something: they are more expensive than buying both a regular smartphone and small tablet. It makes no sense because they use less materials by definition and the engineering costs should be spread across all units. Since the volume is so small that is not the case. That means they are supply driven items, something that manufacturers are pushing to increase the profit per item and absolutely not something that people are asking for. Which is exactly why they are a show-off luxury item, they make no financial sense and this is actually their primary feature. It allows you to announce to the world you have enough disposable income to not care about practicality. They are just like the impractical sports cars a young fool would buy before he gets financially wiser or the absurdly expensive mechanical watch a successful business executive would buy to announce his success. Except that instead of targeting tiny markets those things have, they are targeting the upper middle class. The per unit profit is lower but the volume is potentially much bigger, there is money to be made thus it gets made.

They remind me of the "multifunction" cooking robots (like the Thermomix) that promise to do everything yet cannot do anything well and efficiently. They have motors that are too slow to make a good blender but too little torque to make a good processor. The jug they use is too large for proper cavitation yet too small to accept raw ingredients without preprocessing. And they don't cost less than the combination of devices with equal capabilities. They are driven by the same marketing fundamentals, as something that adds convenience but actually loses efficiency and quality if you were to try using them for what they pretend to do. Unsurprisingly they target bored middle-class women just like much of the large smartphones, and, ultimately the foldables.

So here it is, I understand why Foldable exists. I get the "reasons" some will get one and I find the engineering prowess very cool. But they will never be the "next big unlock". And they don't have to be, they are not a tool in any practical sense. That's fine but it's just not for me.