I've sunk many hours of playing the OG Rollercoaster Tycoon and OpenTTD on my foldable screen; perfectly optimized. I don't think I would have even 5% of that time on a rectangular phone

Maybe from 10 years ago, but not twenty!

True, but if both bricks and the hinge are made of tungsten, it's not going to matter that much anyway if you're just dropping it onto a wood floor. Like, what you said isn't wrong, but you're insinuating that the creators weren't aware of that fact when they made the thing

I invite you to actually check, there's actually nothing modern below 6 inches, except those gimmicky 3" screen phones you can find on temu and such

Damn no shit, what a weird step back for no reason.

Nah. The worst possible thing they could be is the second worst thing.

The worst thing to happen to smarohones was when Androids stopped coming with slide-out physical keyboards.

Fuck Apple for many reasons, but the onscreen keyboard is the most egregious and unforgivable of those reasons.

OK, I'll agree to second place for AI then. That puts folding phones into third place at worst.

Your 6' phone would look enormous next to an 18" replica of stonehenge

Just use an usb-c keyboard, you can use a much bigger one than would ever fit in a phone. Those tiny ones where a thumb covers 5 keys at a time weren't that great, SwiftKey is much faster

It was ok until predictive text and swiping went completely to sit (for example).

Great, another thing to carry in my pocket

Believe it or not but my zflip 5 is the longest survivor out of my devicez so far

Everything has a drawback. built in keyboard was a nightmare to fix.

No. It should be integrated into the phone, impossible to leave somewhere and incapable of having connection issues.

The fact that most smartphone users are illiterate and would rather watch a video and send voice notes than actually write anything worth reading isn't an excuse to make the phone useless to anyone capable of forming complete sentences.

It was never ok. It was tolerable, but I resented losing the keyboard before I got to.the second generation of phones that didn't have one.

I'd happily pay the absolutely stupid prices they want to charge for the stupid foldy phones to get something with modern flagship specs and the form factor of the G1.

Oops, I think I meant to reply to the same person you were replying to

I do think I saw clicks say they were talking to a custom ROM project, but I'm not positive I'm remembering that right

the only people I see with foldables are people who buy their phones from their carriers on payment plans.

9000 dolla dolla. Insert cash or select payment type.

Why would you want a bigger phone with less battery life for the 5 times a decade you need to write a novel? I can get up to about 50 wpm on a smartphone. Past that, it has to be a full-size keyboard. The slide-out ones aren't any better than an on-screen one.

If you can't use one, or haven't configured it to fit your style, that's a skill issue.

I got an "open box" OG Pixel Fold for $350 last November. Everything else new or refurb in the price range was just another rectangular slab. I like the squarish aspect ratio for chess and reading but 16:9 video comes with black bars coving 1/3 of the screen. I dislike the taller foldables that came after and I assume it'll be much more than 2 years before the new passport shaped foldables are available as refurbs for less than $500 so if/when this one conks out I'll be back to using a slab phone as a hotspot for an ipad mini.

As a foldable owner: you are wrong. You may not care for it, I respect that much.

The trick is to buy last year's foldable for around 1/3 used.

I got my fold 7 a month before 8 was announced for 1/3 of the price of a new 8 Ultra , it's even running oneui 9 now. Not much has changed.

I used to be a fold hater until I got one..now I've had 3 folds and never going back to a boring slab phone AND a mini tablet , my fold 7 is a all in one that fits in my pocket and weighs the same as a mini tablet minus the extra phone. My gf got my old fold and now lives off it as she runs 3 apps at once on it. Before she lugged around a s23ultra and and 13inch tablet.

The secret is to buy last year's model used at 1/3 the price of new and the haters are people who never actually used one especially for multi tasking multi windows which is why they don't understand them. I was one til I did.

I find those tiny keyboards much harder to use than my onscreen kb. I still get like 60 wpm without swipe or autocorrect or anything which is easily sufficient. Sure it's not nearly as fast as a PC kb but I can't imagine I'd be faster on a tiny physical one.

I love mine, had a folding for for 5 years now. Currently using a Razr. They work great, display works for about 2-3 years is my experience. It's usually cheaper to buy a new one than repair as the display assembly is a new chassis with the hinge.
I don't use a case, the display is protected by closing it, but Motorola included one and they include the protective screen cover (mandatory). As flexible display technology improves, I expect they will last longer.

A whole group of folding phone haters has emerged, normal people just don't buy the thing they don't want. Theses people go on crusades blathering on about their opinion, of which I couldn't care less about. They seem to be triggered by the area where the display bends ( I don't notice it) but it is there and I can feel it, how fragile the device is but I see people with broken displays on regular phones all the time, and the price ( they can't afford one? ). I assume they just need a proper hobby.

A six foot screen will always rip your jeans unless you are a T-Rex.

Seems insane to say "they work great" followed by "the screen lasts about 2-3 years." Seems insanely wasteful. I use my phones for at least 5 years now. To spend that much money on something that you're essentially forced to replace that often is so wasteful.

No need to get past the 3rd sentence; it speaks for itself how dumb folding phones are. Screen just takes a shit after 3 years and it’s cheaper to replace than repair lol do you not hear yourself? What do you see as a gain for it? I don’t feel my iPhone 16 needs to fold up shorter and thicker, I don’t need a crease in my display, I don’t get scratches and I don’t need a screen protector. It’s a gimmick.

Yes, this is ridiculous. My last iphone lasted 6 years, I bought one of those kits to DIY replace the battery at about year 4 to get more time out of it before I traded it in. 2-3 years means you’ve likely just paid it off for only a year before buying again.

Yeah, I respect my hard earned pennies and I cannot commit to a folding phone due to their longevity.

I've been using a Galaxy Flip for years. Never going back to the big slab. Rumors of screen life are pure internet bullshit.

almost noone will buy them and they will eventually stop producing them.

Samsung sold 10 million so far, Nostradamus.

the screen is flexible. that's the point.

They easily fit into any pocket. This isn't rocket appliances.

A flip 7 is under $600.

I had three stylus phones over 6 years. Never used the stylus once. Ever. Samsung got user data back and ditched it.

People of Lemmy are conservative, they get confused and scared of our modern world.

Thats not a reason for it to exist. Normal phones do that even better

Huh? It's the one real smartphone innovation I've seen in the last decade or so. A phone that can become a tablet would be very useful.

Worst is definitely losing the sd card slot.

I mean I didn't use it most of the time either, but it was extremely handy having it when I wanted to use it specifically.

My wife uses hers a good bit playing games and such too 🤷

My biggest gripe is a lack of low-end phones with massive screens that aren’t high-end.

Both my parents are octogenarians with declining vision. I just want to get them into an iPhone whose screen they can actually see easily, but without going into that low-functionality “assistive access” mode.

Because it doesn’t help if the interface doesn’t allow you to tell apart two different phone numbers for the same person. Like, literally - it just shows the label, not the phone number, and when both numbers have the same label…

i have one, i didn't get it on a plan. i love it (its a Moto 50 Ultra flip) small outside screen can do lots of things, folds up tiny in my pocket.

Got my Moto 50u really cheap, 50% off and had a $300 gift certificate about to expire (here in Australia)

Like the Samsung Fold 8 for many of the same reasons but im not rich, so maybe when the Fold 10 comes out and there's a clearance sale :) ... but would never go back to a slab now.

that's one reason I use a Moto 50u flip, excellent pocketablity and the tiny outside screen is fine for message replies, reading short emails, time, day calender etc etc

glad you're enjoying it!

Why do you change so often?

I loved mine until it exploded! :'(
Now I have a unihertz titan. It's a really fun little phone!

i miss SD card slots

How did your Razr die? Battery went up, or the screen just gave out?

And if, for some reason, you want/need double the size of a regular phone screen?

Or just want to be able to fold your regular phone into something half the size? Because I'll tell you, a normal phone does NOT fit easily into smaller pockets without risking falling out (or gradually ripping holes in them, as several of my pairs of pants can attest to).