I don’t understand how Android is the dominant phone platform.

To be fair the iPhone SE 3 is hanging out at about the same sales numbers as the Galaxy Fold series... but it's not gaining slowly, it's stagnating with the likely outcome that the SE 4 has been cancelled.

Again-- not a foldable owner because reasons, but it wasn't until the Fold 4 and really now with the 5 that the product has hit a high level of maturity. It's not an early adopter device anymore. Consumers know the Pixel Fold is an early adopter device and despite a better screen form factor it's probably not going to be a success at the current price. It's an experiment... for now. Moto's catching up on Flip phones and the real question going forward is whether we consider flip and fold to be the same market category distinct from candy bar phones, or if they all get separated out into their own things.

FWIW, I think the hard sell of the Galaxy Fold's price tag gets really hard to sell with a similar price point for Google given the fact that the Tensor G2 is really slow in flagship terms. REALLY slow. It's certainly plenty fast for many users, but if you're spending $1,800 ish on a phone it needs to be a lot faster with a lot better GPU. Rumors on the Tensor G3 show some marked improvement over the G2 with a meaningfully new 9-core architecture (instead of 8). I'm not sure it's likely to be faster enough to woo some demanding customers, but in two weeks it might be that Google shows off a SoC that roughly achieves parity with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2--just in time for Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to leapfrog it again later in October.

hestermofet said:

This is the exact same story the Note followed.

Click to expand...

Given that most phones still don’t implement the Notes signature stylus feature 12 years later, I’m not sure this is a good example of “Apple will surely follow”. As for its large size, within 4 years of the Notes introduction Apple had already bumped the size of the iPhone twice with the iPhone 5 and the 6. But other flagship phones from multiple OEMs had grown as well so it was more of a general trend than the Note specifically being a trendsetter.

That latter point is important because the large size took over Samsungs premium offering despite the Note itself eventually disappearing. Other premium phones converged on it to the point that within 5 or 6 years of launch all premium Samsung phones were Note-sized. Foldables are no where near the same trajectory - 20% YoY won’t bring them to taking over the whole premium sector for another 10 years.

And unlike the Note, foldables have a number of downsides that are inherent to the form factor - more delicate screens, battery life limitations, cost. These are things people care about. The battery life is particularly germane to the Note compare because battery life was a huge selling point of the Note - the larger body allowed for a huge battery which people wanted. Foldables are on the other side of that comparison with smaller batteries than slab phones and more power draw from the larger screen.

So I don’t see anything like the Notes manifest destiny in foldables sales.

wrylachlan said:

Given that most phones still don’t implement the Notes signature stylus feature 12 years later, I’m not sure this is a good example of “Apple will surely follow”. As for its large size, within 4 years of the Notes introduction Apple had already bumped the size of the iPhone twice with the iPhone 5 and the 6.

Click to expand...

They half-assed first an increase to 4" and then 4.7". It took them a while to get to an industry standard size of over 5.5". Apple has been a laggard in the past, and large screens is one of the biggest examples of Apple is often a trend follower, not a trendsetter.

But other flagship phones from multiple OEMs had grown as well so it was more of a general trend than the Note specifically being a trendsetter.

Click to expand...

You are being completely ridiculous. This is very motivated reasoning.

The Note was the first phablet, that other OEMs released models as well in response to the Note is why it can be said it was a trendsetting design. Or are we redefining what "trendsetting" means, because only Apple can be a trendsetter? I guess Apple wasn't a trendsetter either, there was nothing unique or innovative about the iPhone's capacitive touch slab design because other OEMs flooded the market with capacitive touch phones as well.

wrylachlan said:

That latter point is important because the large size took over Samsungs premium offering despite the Note itself eventually disappearing.

Click to expand...

Um, kind of the point I'm making about foldables? The Galaxy S Ultra is the Galaxy Note in all but name. The stylus wasn't the key feature that you think it was. It was the flashiest feature, but the reason people bought it was the large screen.

wrylachlan said:

Other premium phones converged on it to the point that within 5 or 6 years of launch all premium Samsung phones were Note-sized.\

Click to expand...

Yeah, kind of exactly my point. All the OEMs except notably Apple are moving towards launching foldables, if they haven't already.

wrylachlan said:

Foldables are no where near the same trajectory - 20% YoY won’t bring them to taking over the whole premium sector for another 10 years.

Click to expand...

It's not 20% YoY, why do you keep saying this? Multiple sources are saying 50% or more growth.

[ International Data Corporation (IDC) expects worldwide shipments of foldable phones, including flip and fold form factors, to reach 21.4 million units in 2023. This represents an increase of more than 50% over the 14.2 million units shipped in 2022. An updated IDC forecast projects that foldable phone shipments will reach 48.1 million units in 2027 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.6% from 2022 to 2027.

Click to expand...

According to the Counterpoint Research Foldable Tracker and Foldable Insight Report, the global foldable smartphone market increased 64% YoY in Q1 2023, based on sell-in volume, to reach 2.5 million units. This is quite significant because the foldable market rose amid a 14.2% year-on-year decline in the overall global smartphone market during the same period. Foldable smartphone markets in almost all major regions, including China, North America and Western Europe, displayed strong growth in Q1 2023.

Click to expand...

5G is not the only exciting technology that’s keeping the entire mobile industry afloat, with excitement also growing for foldable and flip phones, which analysts are now expecting to see tremendous growth in over the next five years.

In a new forecast on foldable smartphones, analyst house IDC says it expects 21.4 million devices to ship this year. That’s more than 50% up compared to last year, when 14.2 million such units shipped.

By the time we reach 2027, the world will have bought 48.1 million foldable devices, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.6% over five years.

Heating up the race​

The smartphone market has been in freefall for some time, with IDC saying that sales dropped by more than 11%, IDC says. Other market analysts are saying that there is growing demand for used devices, mostly because they’re cheaper, and other consumers believe it’s more environmentally-friendly to buy used devices.

Finally, people are happy to keep their current devices for longer, as the build quality has improved and the software is more optimized.

Click to expand...

Foldables are the only bright spot for smartphones, not these staid, last year's design warmed over that Apple iteratively releases year after year to a collective yawn.

wrylachlan said:

Foldables are on the other side of that comparison with smaller batteries than slab phones and more power draw from the larger screen.

Click to expand...

Flip phones have the same size screen as slabs, but you can use the smaller outer screen for many use cases, so they end up having better battery life than slabs, despite the nominally smaller battery. There is a reason why this form factor is way, WAY more popular than horizontal folds by a factor of about 2.

So I don’t see anything like the Notes manifest destiny in foldables sales.

Click to expand...

You're free to have your own opinion, but it's wrongheaded and blind to reality, and the main reason seems to be that Apple didn't do it first. All the evidence is there that foldables are a smashing success, in fact, the only segment of smartphones that's seeing any real growth. Everything else is stagnant at best, declining at worst. You're just choosing to ignore the evidence. Exactly the same way Apple fans were blind to the trend of phablets until it became too obvious for Apple to continue to ignore the segment, and release one of their own.

Before foldables arrived, the most dramatic shift we saw in smartphone design was the proliferation of larger screens. Like foldables, smartphones with big screens used to be a niche and were available only on devices geared toward early adopters like the original Samsung Galaxy Note. But as the app economy boomed and people began relying on their phones for nearly everything, from banking to calling cabs, watching movies and snapping photos, people embraced larger displays.

Now just about every phone on the market has a screen that's six inches or larger, making the 2011-era Galaxy Note's 5.3-inch display seem minuscule. And perhaps unsurprisingly, South Korea was one of the first markets to adopt this shift too.


When data research firm Flurry Analytics sampled 97,963 iOS and Android devices worldwide back in 2013, only 7% of those devices were so-called "phablets," a portmanteau of "phone" and "tablet" that was previously used to describe phones with big screens. But for South Korea, that number was 41%.

Click to expand...

Sorry, had to make this two posts because of a forum character limit

wrylachlan said:

And unlike the Note, foldables have a number of downsides that are inherent to the form factor - more delicate screens, battery life limitations, cost.

Click to expand...

This criticisms apply to phablets as well. The larger screens of phablets are more delicate, and present more surface area to be knocked by a hard object and crack. Phablets cost more.

Folding the screen protects it way more than any case or screen protector can. I mean, it's obvious, there's a reason the Nintendo DS was such a popular design for gamers under the age of 12 who are notoriously hard on devices. I don't even use a case for my phone, there is no point because the design itself is a lot less fragile than one that exposes the primary screen at all times. Yes, the internal screen of a foldable is more delicate than a slab. But here's the thing, you don't expose the internal screen unless you are actually using it. A slab's screen is exposed at all times, and this is when it can get damaged. i.e. every single moment the phone exists. The risk to a foldable's more delicate of the two screens is only when that screen is unfolded. Which the vast majority of the time not the case. For the majority of the hours in a day, that screen is closed and protected.

If you drop a slab phone, the screen will crack. This has happened to all of us. Think of how many times your phone has slid off a table or something. If you drop a folding phone, the screen is automatically protected if it's closed, and if it's open, the phone will likely even close itself to protect the screen (depending on how it's designed, and how it falls) because the hinge is smooth enough that it doesn't require that much force to close. You need to have the phone open and in your hand, and then more or less intentionally strike the screen with an object to put it at the same risk of damage as a slab phone. A very unlikely scenario.

Just look at your screen on time on your phone. It's only a handful of hours a day. And consider on top of that, with a foldable, the outer, more durable screen will account for a lot of those on time hours for a foldable phone. The actual risk profile for the more fragile of the two screens is way, way smaller than a slab phone's screen, so it doesn't need to be as durable. The same way your lungs don't have to be as durable as your hands and feet, so doesn't need thick skin and an internal skeleton to protect it. It has your ribcage to protect it, so it's ok that it's fleshy and weak.

What is this battery life compromise you speak of? Have you actually used a foldable that you are able to comment on the battery life? My Flip Z4 has the best battery life of any Android I've ever used, and is comparable (or sometimes better) than the battery life of iPhones. A big reason the flip (as opposed to fold) style can have such great battery life is that you can use it in many scenarios without opening it fully, therefore, it only needs to power the smaller external display. It takes up a lot of the use cases of a smartwatch. You get the best of both battery worlds. A nice, big, power hungry display when you want to read something or watch something, and a small, power sipping display for everything else.

I watch YouTube hours a day, I treat it like a podcast. Yet I still get amazing battery life. I think I've charged my phone only a handful of times in the middle of the day, I usually don't need to charge it until after 9pm. The reason I get such crazy battery despite watching videos all day long while I work is that if I'm not paying direct attention, I can fold the screen halfway. The video plays on the top half in a much smaller window, and the bottom half of the screen becomes transport controls. With the black theme, the OLED display is only powered on for about 60% of its surface area. Hence, the incredible battery life even while watching video content. Do I love having a giant display to watch video? Of course. But do I need a giant display all the time? No. Then why should my battery always suffer for the few times I actually want a huge display?

These are things people care about. The battery life is particularly germane to the Note compare because battery life was a huge selling point of the Note - the larger body allowed for a huge battery which people wanted.

Click to expand...

Yes, they are things people care about, and these are areas where folding designs actually excel. Now that the engineering is mature, they are more durable than slabs. The fragility problem with initial designs wasn't the screen, it was the hinge. The issue with the screen wasn't fragility, it was legibility of the crease. But the weakness of the hinge was a mechanical engineering problem that has long since been solved, and it's a much easier problem to solve than increasing the durability of the screen. The screen doesn't need to be as durable as a slab phone's screen, because it's closed for the vast majority of the time.

On these early models, if the screen broke, it was usually because the hinge failed in some way. It usually wasn't because the screen itself was exposed and cracked. The early hinges were not that great, and wouldn't even fully close so excessive strain was put on the screen. Not an issue any more, hasn't been for a few generations now.

The form factor itself lends itself to longer battery life. The cost has come down to the point where it is comparable to traditional slab designs, because again, the engineering has matured. You can buy a modern folding phone from a tier one OEM (Samsung) for as little as $600 MSRP. It's mature tech at this point. These things that folding phones are better at than slabs, all the benefits you pointed out about phablets, is why the folding phone segment is the only segment seeing explosive growth.

There are two ways to increase battery life. Either brute force it by shipping a massive, oversized battery (Note). Or discourage the user from using the device (iPhone). iPhones have traditionally had smaller batteries than their immediate competitors, but made up for it by software that shuts everything down as soon as possible. This is the design philosophy that folding phones engender. In the race to sleep, folding phones win hands down, and then do a victory lap. The smaller outer display with shortcuts to the most frequently accessed functions allows users to do their task quickly (check a notification, respond to a message, transport controls for media playback, initiate or pickup a call, etc) without powering up the hungriest component, then put the phone away quickly so even the CPU can shutdown.

hestermofet said:

It's not 20% YoY, why do you keep saying this? Multiple sources are saying 50% or more growth.

Click to expand...

Your initial claim was that Samsung’s foldables had grown 50% in 2022. That’s not correct. Samsungs foldables grew 20% in 2022. The entire foldables market is forecast to grow 50% in 2023. But that same forecast you cited has that growth slowing substantially after that so that foldables only get to 40M sales by 2027.

In other words, the Note you keep comparing to had fully transformed smartphone size within 5 years, but the best forecast of foldables has them still a minority of the market after 8.

You’re overcommitted to foldables being on the same trajectory as the Note and ignoring the clear differences.

wrylachlan said:

Your initial claim was that Samsung’s foldables had grown 50% in 2022. That’s not correct. Samsungs foldables grew 20% in 2022.

Click to expand...

Please provide your citation for this repeated claim. I made one incorrect claim somewhere, but I didn't repeat it again. you've repeatedly been saying 20% despite all the evidence I've been showing to the contrary. Here, again, is more evidence you are flat out spinning a tale that is divorced from reality:

Global foldable smartphone shipments grew by just under 40% in 2022 compared to 2021, and we expect them to grow by almost 60% in 2023.

Click to expand...

I don't see any source claiming foldables only grew 20% in 2022. Please show me where you are seeing this, or stop repeating it.

wrylachlan said:

But that same forecast you cited has that growth slowing substantially after that so that foldables only get to 40M sales by 2027.

Click to expand...

Please define "substantially" with some actual numbers. Because that is not what I am seeing:


I don't know what your definition of "growth slowing substantially" is but that looks like a geometric growth curve to me.

wrylachlan said:

In other words, the Note you keep comparing to had fully transformed smartphone size within 5 years, but the best forecast of foldables has them still a minority of the market after 8.

Click to expand...

After 5 years, Apple got involved. I would expect the explosive growth of foldables to accelerate once Apple launches a model, and it won't be long after that they are a significant portion of the market.

In case you are unaware, the entire smartphone market is stagnating, and shrinking in some areas. Smartphones as a whole were growing massively when phablets were launched. In case you are further unaware, the entire world shut down for two years during the time span we are looking at. So of course they are not going to see the exact same growth pattern. Two worlds that phablets and foldables were invented in are completely incomparable, so of course the amount of time they take to achieve the same market penetration will be different.

If anything, foldables are doing better than phablets. When phablets were invented by Samsung, many people who bought a Note, that was their first smartphone ever. There was so much room for growth because the market wasn't saturated and mature yet. Now, everyone who wants a smartphone has one. People are holding on to their phones longer, are replacing them mostly when their old one breaks, and the replacement is increasingly a used device for many people. Despite all the obstacles they face to spending money to upgrade that phablets never had to face, foldables are still seeing double digit growth. Many people are replacing their perfectly fine slab for a foldable, which is something we don't see as often with other categories of smartphones. That why foldable growth is so high, and the growth of phones like the iPhone is so flat or even negative in many cases. Nobody wants to replace their perfectly fine iPhone with another of basically the same thing, just with a higher version number. New sales are increasingly been driven for iPhone with devices that are aging out rather than newer better replacements of still functional older devices, and that's why Apple is trying so damned hard to kill the second hand resale market. Iphones arent compelling enough to get people to upgrade. Foldables are though.

wrylachlan said:

You’re overcommitted to foldables being on the same trajectory as the Note and ignoring the clear differences.

Click to expand...

hahaha. Please, articulate these clear differences. You need to establish that first before you start stating it as a fact.

Please, please continue to tell me how foldables aren't a force to be reckoned with and how Apple can continue to ignore the glaring, obvious demand in the market for foldables. All you are doing is exposing how blind you are to trends in the mobile industry until Apple becomes involved in them.


View: https://twitter.com/mingchikuo/status/1509885554967859204

Ming-Chi Kuo has an amazing track record for very well-researched and sourced Apple rumours that turn out to be true. Apple's partner for this segment appears to be LG, not Samsung.

Roh also said sales of Samsung's foldables are almost on par with those of its now-extinct Galaxy Note line, which has essentially been folded into the Galaxy S series. That could be a sign that foldables are starting to follow the same path as the Note by appealing to more than just early adopters.

Click to expand...

Roh is Samsung's head of Samsung's mobile division. But I guess your fictional account of history is supposed to be more persuasive than the guy who has actual intimate details of sales numbers of both product lineups? There are clear differences between the two products.

And again, I will refer to the same quote again from the same article:

Before foldables arrived, the most dramatic shift we saw in smartphone design was the proliferation of larger screens. Like foldables, smartphones with big screens used to be a niche and were available only on devices geared toward early adopters like the original Samsung Galaxy Note. But as the app economy boomed and people began relying on their phones for nearly everything, from banking to calling cabs, watching movies and snapping photos, people embraced larger displays.

Now just about every phone on the market has a screen that's six inches or larger, making the 2011-era Galaxy Note's 5.3-inch display seem minuscule. And perhaps unsurprisingly, South Korea was one of the first markets to adopt this shift too.


When data research firm Flurry Analytics sampled 97,963 iOS and Android devices worldwide back in 2013, only 7% of those devices were so-called "phablets," a portmanteau of "phone" and "tablet" that was previously used to describe phones with big screens. But for South Korea, that number was 41%.

That same report says the market for connected devices in South Korea grew more rapidly than the worldwide market in late 2011 and early 2012. Growth in South Korea slowed after that, but Flurry Analytics interpreted that as an indication that the country was the first to reach mobile saturation.

"As such, it provides a good early indicator of what other markets can expect once the rapid growth period the mobile market has experienced over the past few years ends," Mary Ellen Gordon wrote in Flurry's report back then.

Click to expand...

hestermofet said:

They half-assed first an increase to 4" and then 4.7". It took them a while to get to an industry standard size of over 5.5". Apple has been a laggard in the past, and large screens is one of the biggest examples of Apple is often a trend follower, not a trendsetter.

Click to expand...

While the 4” iPhone 5/5S was indeed a weak attempt at a bigger phone, the 4.7” 6 and 5.5” 6+ launched on the same day.

wco81 said:

Or if they think it would spur a greater cycle of upgrades than the candy bar form factor. So their implementation of the foldable UX would have to be compelling.

Click to expand...

Thinking of the category as "foldables" might not be the right paradigm. One single large screen that folds isn't the real benefit. When it's folded, the single large screen isn't really doing anything for you. Thus, we get comments like "when it's folded, it's so thick, so you don't actually save any space". Well, yes, thanks Capt Obvious, you cannot defy the laws of physics and make an object fit into a space smaller than its volume. What you actually benefit from are two screens to access, depending on what you are doing at the moment, with their own strengths and weaknesses.

It might be better to think of them as dual-screen phones instead of one big screen that folds to be smaller. The benefits of two screens are akin to big.LITTLE CPU architectures. One screen is for the 80% of daily tasks that require minimal or very brief interaction, and can get by with low power usage. The other screen is for content consumption and productivity when you are willing to sacrifice power consumption in order to get more screen real estate. The UX is completely different to how you use and experience a slab phone. For the Samsung Fold, the two devices you would be replacing could be seen as a smartphone and a tablet. The Flip though, it would be a smartphone and a smartwatch. I think a lot of foldable detractors are stuck thinking of foldables as tablet replacements, and think "I rarely need a tablet everywhere I go, so why would I want a foldable?" But the form factor that is actually the most popular allows you to treat your phone as a smartwatch, which is a much more useful device to carry with you everywhere you go.

Samsung already has a decent UX for foldables because they've been doing them for a while. They also have best in class window management for touchscreen UIs thanks to their long history with the Note and jumbo sized screens on handheld devices. But it's even better now with the launch of Pixel Fold, because core Google suite apps are being updated to take advantage of two screens or two screen halves.

Chris FOM said:

While the 4” iPhone 5/5S was indeed a weak attempt at a bigger phone, the 4.7” 6 and 5.5” 6+ launched on the same day.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the correction. It's still silly how long it took Apple to get with the program though. And 5.5" is still kind of small, especially in the context of the enormous forehead and chin iPhones sported until the iPhone X. The Plus phones were physically gigantic given how little screen space you actually got, and how unoptimized the software was for the larger screen compared to Android. The homescreen for the Plus phones was the biggest WTF for me. So much extra space, and the only thing it does different is allow you to rotate the icons 90 degrees. Meanwhile, Samsung who already was well on the way to perfecting the Note by that point had Picture in Picture for video, pseudo floating windows, and a whole bunch of other UI features on the home screen alone that took advantage of the larger screen. I personally don't think large screen iPhones really came into their own until Apple dropped the Home button. That's when the software finally took advantage of the larger screen available to it.

hestermofet said:

The Flip though, it would be a smartphone and a smartwatch.

Click to expand...

Probably not. A Flip isn't ever worn on your wrist, so you'll always be digging it out of your pocket or bag to check it instead of just raising your wrist. As a not-worn thing, it also can't do one of the major things a smartwatch can, which is be a health/fitness tracker. A Flip can't monitor your heart rate, or your blood oxygen levels, or your sleep patterns.

As someone who used to wear a smartwatch and now has a Flip, I don't wear a smartwatch any more. It's not a perfect replacement for a smartwatch but a smartphone isn't a perfect replacement for a digital camera or iPod either. It doesn't need to be perfect it needs to be good enough.

cogwheel said:

Probably not. A Flip isn't ever worn on your wrist, so you'll always be digging it out of your pocket or bag to check it instead of just raising your wrist. As a not-worn thing, it also can't do one of the major things a smartwatch can, which is be a health/fitness tracker. A Flip can't monitor your heart rate, or your blood oxygen levels, or your sleep patterns.

Click to expand...

For many users, it's pocketed. For other demographics, it's often attached to a shoulder or wrist strap much like a small purse. For those demographics, the glance-ability of the front screen is important, but they also get the benefit that the main screen isn't exposed. There are cases that will accomplish the same thing for a slab phone, but it's not as simple and you don't get any glance-able screen.

hestermofet said:

Thinking of the category as "foldables" might not be the right paradigm. One single large screen that folds isn't the real benefit. When it's folded, the single large screen isn't really doing anything for you. Thus, we get comments like "when it's folded, it's so thick, so you don't actually save any space". Well, yes, thanks Capt Obvious, you cannot defy the laws of physics and make an object fit into a space smaller than its volume. What you actually benefit from are two screens to access, depending on what you are doing at the moment, with their own strengths and weaknesses.

It might be better to think of them as dual-screen phones instead of one big screen that folds to be smaller. The benefits of two screens are akin to big.LITTLE CPU architectures. One screen is for the 80% of daily tasks that require minimal or very brief interaction, and can get by with low power usage. The other screen is for content consumption and productivity when you are willing to sacrifice power consumption in order to get more screen real estate. The UX is completely different to how you use and experience a slab phone. For the Samsung Fold, the two devices you would be replacing could be seen as a smartphone and a tablet. The Flip though, it would be a smartphone and a smartwatch. I think a lot of foldable detractors are stuck thinking of foldables as tablet replacements, and think "I rarely need a tablet everywhere I go, so why would I want a foldable?" But the form factor that is actually the most popular allows you to treat your phone as a smartwatch, which is a much more useful device to carry with you everywhere you go.

Samsung already has a decent UX for foldables because they've been doing them for a while. They also have best in class window management for touchscreen UIs thanks to their long history with the Note and jumbo sized screens on handheld devices. But it's even better now with the launch of Pixel Fold, because core Google suite apps are being updated to take advantage of two screens or two screen halves.

Click to expand...

Another thing to think about is we judge size of things and find sizes to be useful or not based one one dimension sometimes, sometimes another. Whether it fits in a pocket or a purse is more length and width than thickness, so being twice as thick but half as long is really good for some users. I only really have talked to one person about their foldable phone, and they do use it a lot folded. It's good for texts and chats, most email and such, which is probably close to half their interactions, and it folds out into a full size phone when that's not enough.

So I can see the attraction. The reason I haven't gone there is I still don't trust the hinge. Living with a longer but thinner phone with no hinge means I've got a product that's in some ways not as nice, but it lacks the most likely failure mode for a foldable and that's a good trade ... for me. Time will tell whether they've met the reliability that the market wants.

hestermofet said:

As someone who used to wear a smartwatch and now has a Flip, I don't wear a smartwatch any more. It's not a perfect replacement for a smartwatch but a smartphone isn't a perfect replacement for a digital camera or iPod either. It doesn't need to be perfect it needs to be good enough.

Click to expand...

As a smartwatch wearer myself, a smart watch isn't even a perfect replacement for a dumb watch. It's better overall, which is why I'm wearing the smart watch right now. And smartwatches cover a wide gamut of UX, from iWatch (which sacrifices style for functionality but has crummy fitness tracking) to my current Garmin Vivomove (which sacrifices functionality for style and has crummy fitness tracking). To fitbits which sacrifice general purpose function and style for fitness tracking.

Nevarre said:

Because it's not Apple is MORE than enough justification.

The fact that it's a platform where you have a high degree of control is the icing on the cake. The iPhone is struggling to achieve interface parity with the customization that Android has had for years, and much of the value-add of the ecosystem is not as useful unless you buy into the entire closed ecosystem.

The fact is that everyone else dropped the ball and the ship of "what should a smartphone look like" is a ship that has sailed. Nobody else has the resources or the will to throw at the problem.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I bought my first Apple products recently those being iPhone 14 pro and MacBook Pro and I can't use them to their full potential because it's a pain in the rear to learn and counter intuitive. Those first Apple products are also my last Apple Products. I just don't like Apple. They are overpriced and a pain to learn.

dragongoddess said:

Agreed. I bought my first Apple products recently those being iPhone 14 pro and MacBook Pro and I can't use them to their full potential because it's a pain in the rear to learn and counter intuitive. Those first Apple products are also my last Apple Products. I just don't like Apple. They are overpriced and a pain to learn.

Click to expand...

When I had a Mac, I did some things from the command line, including bash scripts and such, because it was easier than getting the GUI to do what I wanted. Or maybe just possible. Then there's also software that only exists on Windows. That's a complete pain in the ass. Less bad than it used to be because VM's are pretty mainstream now but still painful. Maybe WINE is pretty good now? I don't know about that.

Ultimately since I used Windows at work, I decided it wasn't worth keeping up to speed on how to do stuff on Mac.

If you've decided you don't like the Apple ecosystem and want to go back the good news is that stuff probably has somewhat decent resale value. Sadly you can't change OS's on your iPhone but you can install Windows or Linux on your Macbook. But it sounds like you prefer Windows, so that's what you should go with. And you might be better off selling the Macbook and getting a pretty good Windows machine to replace it.

Slate Money podcast discusses the Blackberry movie.


The regular panel are business journalists based in the US but they had on a Canadian reporter who covered RIMM and has interviewed the co-CEOs who were portrayed in the movie.

She's forceful that the movie took liberties and made caricatures of the CEOs. She didn't find any of it funny, which is a strange take. A movie depicting real life people can be inaccurate but this movie wasn't funny? OK, different strokes for different folks.

She's got a real nationalistic streak. For instance she says Canadians did great with telecom patents from Nortel so Waterloo was a hotbed of engineering talent. She rejected the scene in the movie that RIMM had the best Canadian engineers as opposed to engineers period.

She claims Blackberry's strength was security, citing that Obama wouldn't give up his BB when he went to the WH. Well they wanted him to give it up because of security reasons.

And we know about security, BB gave backdoors to certain governments.

She claims the better technology lost, compares it to VHS (iPhone and later Android) vs. Betamax (Blackberry).

Speaker There is a great line at the beginning of the movie where Bossily trats out the, you know, good is the enemy of perfect, or Perfect is the enemy.

Speaker C: My favorite quote.

Speaker And then Mike replies, yeah, but good enough is the enemy of humanity.

Speaker And you see that play out through the rest of the movie.

Speaker B: That’s true.

Speaker C: Which is that actually is one of the dramatic themes of this movie, right, is the technology was great.

Speaker C: This was the Betamax of the wireless space, and the VHS came along and slammed it to pieces.

Speaker C: But it was better technology, it made more sense, it was better security, all of the rest of it.

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Out on a limb by herself.

The world went away from hardware keyboards and whatever the Storm was suppose to be, giving up "better technology."

No-one who actually handled or used a Storm or Storm 2 would think it was better than anything at anything.

wrylachlan said:

Your initial claim was that Samsung’s foldables had grown 50% in 2022. That’s not correct. Samsungs foldables grew 20% in 2022. The entire foldables market is forecast to grow 50% in 2023. But that same forecast you cited has that growth slowing substantially after that so that foldables only get to 40M sales by 2027.

In other words, the Note you keep comparing to had fully transformed smartphone size within 5 years, but the best forecast of foldables has them still a minority of the market after 8.

You’re overcommitted to foldables being on the same trajectory as the Note and ignoring the clear differences.

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So your objection to the comparison is that it is a different time-frame? You agree with the rest, just it will take longer?

hestermofet said:

For the Samsung Fold, the two devices you would be replacing could be seen as a smartphone and a tablet.

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GIven that the fold is similar in size to the smaller tables (Fire 7, iPad mini), it certainly would.

hestermofet said:

Thanks for the correction. It's still silly how long it took Apple to get with the program though. And 5.5" is still kind of small, especially in the context of the enormous forehead and chin iPhones sported until the iPhone X.

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Remember all the talk about how no one wanted a larger phone because you couldn't use it with just one hand? How you HAD to have it small. And even with a fixed UI, 5.5" is pretty small.

Shavano said:

So I can see the attraction. The reason I haven't gone there is I still don't trust the hinge. Living with a longer but thinner phone with no hinge means I've got a product that's in some ways not as nice, but it lacks the most likely failure mode for a foldable and that's a good trade ... for me. Time will tell whether they've met the reliability that the market wants.

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I think a fair number of tech savvy people are suspect due to the initial failure of the fold that was really hyped in media (and it was pre-release phones). But people have long memories.

Echohead2 said:

I think a fair number of tech savvy people are suspect due to the initial failure of the fold that was really hyped in media (and it was pre-release phones). But people have long memories.

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I still think know there's absolutely no way a foldable is going to survive in the hands of the kind of people that break slab phones, which is a triple truckload of people. It's just not possible to make a thing with a hinge even close to as rugged as something without one. Also not possible to make them as cheap. So slab phones are here to stay until some future date when it will be in installed in your head in place of your visual cortex.

Echohead2 said:

the initial failure of the fold that was really hyped in media (and it was pre-release phones).

Click to expand...

The actual release versions were delaminating and failing in droves.

Shavano said:

I still think know there's absolutely no way a foldable is going to survive in the hands of the kind of people that break slab phones, which is a triple truckload of people. It's just not possible to make a thing with a hinge even close to as rugged as something without one. Also not possible to make them as cheap. So slab phones are here to stay until some future date when it will be in installed in your head in place of your visual cortex.

Click to expand...

I'm not so sure about that triple truckload of people. I mean broken screens used to be everyone and happen to everyone. These days, I hardly hear about someone breaking their screen anymore. The screens today are just so much tougher than they were, plus cases. Broken slab phones have to be way down from 5-10 years ago, especially percentage wise, but maybe even raw numbers.

I have a cheap ass phone and the backing is plastic that you can pop off and change the battery. The phone has been dropped down the stairs, kicked acorss cement, and all sorts of others abuses. It's fine, not a scratch or break on the screen. My boss is on his 3rd iPhone. He would ever upgrade just to upgrade. He only upgrades when the last phone's glass gets so cracked, he can't use it anymore.

I don't have evidence of this, but I'm starting to think its because of the construction of the phone. The plastic back contorts and bends, disturbing the impact more evenly. An iPhone, or really almost every high end phone, has a metal backing that I think doesn't absorb the impact and the force of the impact travels to the most delicate part: the screen.

Echohead2 said:

I'm not so sure about that triple truckload of people. I mean broken screens used to be everyone and happen to everyone. These days, I hardly hear about someone breaking their screen anymore.

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Wow, do you actually know any people? Like, real, actual people?

analogika said:

Wow, do you actually know any people? Like, real, actual people?

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Yeah, my reaction as well. People are just hopped-up apes, and we know how apes treat things.

Shavano said:

I still think know there's absolutely no way a foldable is going to survive in the hands of the kind of people that break slab phones, which is a triple truckload of people. It's just not possible to make a thing with a hinge even close to as rugged as something without one. Also not possible to make them as cheap. So slab phones are here to stay until some future date when it will be in installed in your head in place of your visual cortex.

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I don't get it. Don't these slab phones ALSO get broken by these types of people? The number of people roaming the streets with a screen cracked so much that I would consider it unusable is shocking.

I'm sorry, hinged designs are LESS durable? Allow me to introduce you to the practically indestructible Nintendo DS. You don't need to have a folding screen to benefit from a more durable folding phone. The MS Surface is an example of a folding design that's way more durable than a slab.

It really is much ado about nothing, it's not like the slab is the most durable design mankind has ever devised. The Fold or the flip is not a huge improvement in durability over the slab, but it is a HUGE improvement in many other ways. And the slab isn't a highly reliable design to begin with. They get cracked or scratched so easily. And precisely in the area that folds/flips are a huge improvement, the durability problem gets worse for slabs. For slabs, the larger the screen, the more likely it will get scratched or cracked. Not the case for folds/flips, that kind of stays constant as you increase screen size.

analogika said:

Wow, do you actually know any people? Like, real, actual people?

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So all these people walking around with broken slab phones, giant cracks right down the middle of the screen ... A truckload of people, you could say ... How exactly is a foldable that is also prone to breaking a downgrade from the current situation?

analogika said:

The actual release versions were delaminating and failing in droves.

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And nobody buys iPhones these days because early models got bent easily and could be held wrong.

hestermofet said:

And nobody buys iPhones these days because early models got bent easily and could be held wrong.

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„Early models“? The iPhone 6 and iPhone 4, respectively, came after the raving successes of the iPhone 3G and 3GS, and the problems were, to some extent, fictitious and easily avoided — or proven to affect all other phones as well.

And yet, here you are, still talking about it.

Had the first iPhone systematically suffered catastrophic failure the way the initial foldables did, the only reason there wouldn’t be a Simpsons scene about it is sheer lack of cultural significance.


View: https://youtu.be/u6qxixgQJ4M?si=b-5mHKEOYr6LVYOh

analogika said:

„Early models“? The iPhone 6 and iPhone 4, respectively, came after the raving successes of the iPhone 3G and 3GS, and the problems were, to some extent, fictitious and easily avoided — or proven to affect all other phones as well.

And yet, here you are, still talking about it.

Had the first iPhone systematically suffered catastrophic failure the way the initial foldables did, the only reason there wouldn’t be a Simpsons scene about it is sheer lack of cultural significance.


View: https://youtu.be/u6qxixgQJ4M?si=b-5mHKEOYr6LVYOh

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Lol, you are missing the point. Nobody but terminally online nerds married to the idea that all new tech is doomed to failure until Apple does it "first" either knows about, cares about or even remembers the failed early folding models. Just like no real humans cared about Bendgate or "you are holding it wrong". By your own metric for cultural awareness of failure, where is the Simpson's episode about folding phones? I guess in the absence of such an episode, folding phones must be, what, a success?

the only reason there wouldn’t be a Simpsons scene about it is sheer lack of cultural significance.

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And you think the Newton was culturally significant? It was a side project from a company that even the executive leadership team didn't expect to survive much beyond 18 months. As in the company wasn't expected to survive more than 18 months by the people running it. Nobody was really paying attention to what Apple was doing at that point, because they had failure after failure after failure, and their corporate finances were circling the drain. Much wow. Such cultural relevance. Very significant.

Bendgate didn't really affect sales because nobody gave a fuck. Rightfully so. Same with the QA and design issues that plagued first-gen folding products. But this is the thing you are not getting. These early folding phones were priced to reflect its cutting edge status, costing twice (or more) than a normal phone. They were not meant to be gigantic product launches like the iPhone X. Nobody actually buys that kind of phone, so nobody cares if they have issues. Once the tech gets cost-reduced to fit in the budget of normal people and not the Marques Brownlees, Justine Ezariks, and Michael Fishers of the world, the kinks get worked out and nobody remembers the early issues with the Status Symbol Edition. Because now you can buy a folding Galaxy that costs exactly the same same as the non-folding Galaxy. So people expect much better quality out of it. And they are getting it because the technology has matured tremendously.

Does anyone remember the screen that literally fell off the solid gold Apple Watch? Oh, right, Apple made a solid gold watch once that cost more than a car! And that's not even the crazy part, the screen would just spontaneously fall off your $10 000 watch that couldn't even be used as a watch without also buying a $700 phone! I wonder how that worked out. I haven't followed up but my guess is that nobody buys Apple Watches today. Man, what a stupid concept, it was doomed to failure, no wonder they disappeared from the market never to be seen again.

This is the bottom line as I see it: You have nothing to actually criticize about the concept or execution of modern folding phones, which is why you need to drag up a couple failed product launches for a handful of super early and cutting edge models from 5 years ago that have no relevance to the product lines that are selling like gangbusters today. Do you care to comment about the reliability of modern folding phones from OEMs that are getting good at it because they are now on their fifth generation of this product category, like Samsung and Motorola? Or do you want to continue to gaslight us into thinking the market is stuck where it was 5 years ago? Samsung and Motorola released a handful of shitty products 5 years ago, and have just sat on their hands the whole time since then?

I can't wait for naysayers such as yourself to eat crow once Apple releases their folding phone, which all reliable rumor aggregators like Ming-Chi Kuo is saying is coming. Just like the phablet form factor which we've all conveniently forgotten the vociferous arguments about how they're an awful idea and Apple will never do it. My day brightens a little to think that people are typing up an angry post about how awful folding phones are, how Apple will never make one because the concept itself is inherently fragile and fundamentally flawed, on their Apple phablet that Apple will never make because phablets are such an awful idea.

hestermofet said:

Lol, you are missing the point. Nobody but terminally online nerds married to the idea that all new tech is doomed to failure until Apple does it "first" either knows about, cares about or even remembers the failed early folding models. Just like no real humans cared about Bendgate or "you are holding it wrong". By your own metric for cultural awareness of failure, where is the Simpson's episode about folding phones? I guess in the absence of such an episode, folding phones must be, what, a success?

And you think the Newton was culturally significant? It was a side project from a company that even the executive leadership team didn't expect to survive much beyond 18 months. As in the company wasn't expected to survive more than 18 months by the people running it. Nobody was really paying attention to what Apple was doing at that point, because they had failure after failure after failure, and their corporate finances were circling the drain. Much wow. Such cultural relevance. Very significant.

Click to expand...

The Newton came out in 1992, not 1997.

Apple was faltering, but still very much in the public eye.

hestermofet said:

I'm sorry, hinged designs are LESS durable? Allow me to introduce you to the practically indestructible Nintendo DS. You don't need to have a folding screen to benefit from a more durable folding phone.

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Wait: the reason foldables are less durable is because of the folding screen. That’s the entire criticism. Delaminating, entryway for grit that damages the hardware — those are issues only because of the displays.

Dup

analogika said:

Wait: the reason foldables are less durable is because of the folding screen. That’s the entire criticism. Delaminating, entryway for grit that damages the hardware — those are issues only because of the displays.

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I was responding to a post that said hinged designs were less durable. Double screened phones is one type of hinged design. You even quoted my sentence where I pointed out that folding phone doesn't mean the screen folds, so I don't really get why you ignored that.

Yes, folding screens are less durable than non-folding screens in certain ways. For example, grit can get in the gap. But they are also more durable in other ways. For example, the screen is protected from scratches and cracks whenever the phone is not in use, which is 95% of the day. Overall, it's probably a wash, maybe folding screens are a bit less durable. But the other benefits (much larger screen in a pocketable form factor, or same screen size in less pocket space) vastly outweigh the minor hit to durability.

A non-folding screen doesn't have much extra in the way of benefits over a folding screen other than possibly being slightly more durable.

analogika said:

The Newton came out in 1992, not 1997.

Apple was faltering, but still very much in the public eye.

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That's a very irrelevant nitpick. It was not a culturally relevant product. Nobody cared about the Newton, not in 1992, not in 1997, not in 2023. Most people don't even realize it ever existed, and think that the iPad was Apple's first tablet computer.

hestermofet said:

That's a very irrelevant nitpick. It was not a culturally relevant product. Nobody cared about the Newton, not in 1992, not in 1997, not in 2023. Most people don't even realize it ever existed, and think that the iPad was Apple's first tablet computer.

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Even Doonesbury spent several strips making fun of the Newton; awareness of it definitely broke out of insular nerd circles.