185
Report: Apple is testing foldable iPhones, having the same problems as everyone else
(arstechnica.com)
Apple already made a folding phone. It was called the iphone 6.
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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My boomerang lasted many years though, I’ll give it that.
I just upgraded from the 6 Plus to the 12 Max like a year ago.
I know Lemmy hates Apple, but I love iOS. Probably because I started on it. My son almost has me convinced though. I might let him pick my next phone and put LineageOS on it.
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Did anyone ask for folding phones?
For the love of god, yes. About half the time, I want a phone. The other I want a tablet. A foldable phone similar to the galaxy fold is exactly what I want.
But I’m locked into the Apple ecosystem for multiple reasons. And no, “just get two devices” isn’t that great an option. I don’t use them at the same time, why not just have them be the same device? Also helps with the fact that I might want to go back and forth between something in both modes.
Well, I just got the S24 Ultra and it's darnn near tablet size. This dwarfs my previous Note. I'm just happy to finally have a flagship Samsung with a flat screen. Rounded screens suck.
Sales suggest, "Yes."
Steve, it was fucking Steve wasn't it?
No, Steve died
That selfish prick! I hope I missed his funeral.
I live in Korea and I see the Samsung foldable phones in the hands of like every 5th person, so yeah I'd say they sell
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Samsung is up to Fold 5, so at least someone keeps buying them. Though they are also up to Flip 5, a concept so dumb I honestly won't believe anyone wants or uses one, so who knows.
I have seen 1 Fold in the wild, and even then, the guy's screen was having issues.
I've had a Fold 4 for prolly 8 months now, no issues. But then, I baby my phone. No bigger screen issues either, but I clean it daily.
Yes. I have the fold 3 and will ask for another foldable when the time to upgrade comes.
the problems:
- they’re crap
- they break easily because they’re crap
- they’re expensive and have a high cost of ownership because they’re crap
- NOBODY FUCKING WANTS THEM
so, why is this happening?
Personally, I love fold phones. They give me portability and a big screen which are the two things I most want in a phone
Yeah I totally believe that they break easily and are way too expensive. But that applies to any cutting edge product ever. Assuming the flaws can be engineered out, the fundamental benefit of having a large screen on a small/portable phone is definitely a killer feature.
I broke most of my previous phones in a variety of ways. The more expensive, the easier they broke. I can't make a phone last. I'm afraid to even look at a foldable.
Shit on Apple for a lot of things, but if they put out a foldable it’s not likely to be crap hardware. Just overpriced with an annoying OS.
Just like Samsung’s phones then? 😆
You think Samsung hardware compares with Apple hardware? O.o
Don’t get me wrong, they don’t tend to put out shit. But they’ve also had a track record of issues like cracking screens and exploding batteries.
Apple tends to only put out the most polished version of something possible, assuming it ever sees the light of day. Their entire reputation is built around that point. If they release a foldable, the hardware will likely be on point.
That’s not to say it will be perfect, it’ll still be running their overly locked down walled garden POS software. But you’re telling me if Apple released a foldable that could have Android installed you wouldn’t be interested?
You must be forgetting that apple already did a folding phone years ago. It was called the iphone 6. That was the highest quality phone ive ever seen them make....
Ha, yes true enough. They do fuck up, though I think we can agree “my chassis bent by a couple degrees” and “my phone blew up” are on different levels.
Their worst fuck up imho was then throttling things when the battery was degraded without telling people. Literally just settled a class action on that too.
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iPhone 4 antenna "you're holding it wrong"
iPhone 6 folding
Wireless mouse charge port on the bottom
Apple pencil charging on the iPad
iPads with display bright spots due to structural adhesives underneath letting go and cables pressing up
MacBook butterfly switches
Garbage cable quality all around
You’ll find issues with literally every hardware company out there. I’m not claiming that Apple is perfect, nor that they don’t make mistakes. I’m claiming the thing they worry about most is their image, and if they don’t think their foldable will be solid they won’t even let it see the light of day.
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Um... I started with a Fold 2 and currently on a fold 5. Maybe YOU don't want them, but it's hardly nobody.
I've had my fold3 for over 2 years and I absolutely love it. I don't think I can go back to a bar-phone now. Also, even if you really don't like folding phones, why fight creativity? Before this phones were getting so boring and completely lacking innovation. They still are in the non-folding market. Even if you don't like them, choice is never a bad thing.
People keep buying them because they don't realize they are crap. We probably have another few years of this until the people with disposable money get tired of the crap phones.
I can't imagine their resale value is very good either. The screens are plastic (they have to be to bend), which means they scratch incredibly easily. Though, I guess that is a good thing if you want to try a scratched-to-hell one that somehow got a tiny bit of dirt in the joint.
They aren't crap at all, stop projecting your opinion as fact.
At worst they're niche, but provide tangible and easily understandable benefits that you might not care about that others love. That's like me hating on the newest Samsungs camera, just because I personally don't value mobile photography.
Your complaints about durabilitu are pretty tied these days, the technology has improved a lot and you can realistically be as careless as you can with any other cell phone. There are valid concerns , such as Samsungs issue with hairline cracking along the hinge, but you can stop parroting points addressed over the past 5 years now.
you can realistically be as careless as you can with any other cell phone.
Hahahahaha... Right, right.
Something with a hinge can be treated the same as a bar where the glass is surrounded by plastic, say a Pixel? I don't think so.
"Realistically", something like this will always be a compromise on durability. There's simply no way for something that bends in half to be "realistically" as durable as something that doesn't.
Hell, I have different regular phones with massive durability differences (one is glass, titanium and ceramic, the other is all plastic), and none of them have a hinge (let alone a foldable screen). Which one of my phones is a folder as "realistically" durable as?
Let's see the testing from the screen manufacturer defining how many folds the screen can do before a crease becomes apparent, or a pixel is lost.
Now let's see the same test stats for a non-bending screen. Oh, yea, they don't have that kind of durability testing, because they don't have wear from bending.
You may wanna look up what "realistically" means.
Edit: so far ~~9~~ 11 morons have shown they don't know what realistically means
Had a fold 3 for almost 3 years and have had no issues at all. The screen is fine, with no scratches at all, heavy use. Dropped it multiple times. One time, i actually threw it because something made me jump whilst i was reading a map on it, and i just got a bit of a scratch on the metal frame from where it hit the tarmac.
No concerns about durability. If you are worried about that, then you have never used one.
Honesrly, I couldn't be happier with it. I won't be going back to non foldables any time soon. The loss of screen size would be too frustrating.
Come back when you have used one for as long as me and anyone else who has one before spouting this nonesense about durability. Because as the other comme ter said its a tired argument. It is only made by the uninformed.
And you might want to interact with the product you're bashing before you talk so much shit about it. I own a 4 year old Z Flip I bought secondhand two years ago and I love it. I work in a mechanic shop and this phone has been dropped on concrete many times, had tools dropped on top of it, had chemicals spilled near or on it, been caught in the rain, and besides all that I open and close the fold a couple dozen times a day most every day. I put the cheapest Amazon phone case I could find on it and to date, I have developed a nearly invisible hairline crack in the very center of the fold that you can only even notice when the screen is off, and one tiny crack in the corner of the front screen that doesn't fold. Whole phone is mint otherwise. It's been incredibly durable over the two years I've had it, far above and beyond what I even expected when I bought it. And being able to fold out the screen for reading or watching videos, or gaming, or comfortable texting, is excellent.
Your point is taken in that yes a flat screen phone won't have a folding hinge that will eventually wear out. But my phone has lasted me two years, after being bought used two years after its release, and I expect an easy 3 more before I end up replacing it so long as I don't drop anything too heavy on it. I consider that a fine lifespan for a modern smartphone. I'll probably never go back to a slab phone unless I don't get a choice when the time comes for a new one.
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Hard disagree, fold 4 gang.
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Why don't we get back to smaller smartphones like a decadr ago?
Same reason you can't buy a new small pickup truck. They don't make them because the mass market isn't there
Cmon! If I promise to put truck nuts on it and drive aggressively will you let me get the small one?
Because they don't sell.
If you ignore screen size (which people erroneously use as a metric for phone size, since it's an easily findable and easy to understand number) and instead look at actual phone dimensions, most phones now aren't actually dissimilar. Bezels have shrunk a lot.
-
Galaxy S24, Jan 2024: 147mm x 70.6mm
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Galaxy S5, Feb 2014: 142mm x 72.5mm
S24 frontal area = 10,378mm²
S5 frontal area = 10,153mm²
The S24 is only 2% larger than its decade-old equivalent. Not something you'd even notice.
If you include the thickness of the device, then the S24 is actually 4% smaller than its decade old equivalent.
Now sure, there were smaller phones, especially if you go further back, like an iPhone 3G genuinely would be considered tiny now.
It's just worth noting that phones aren't actually growing each year anymore like people say they are, and they haven't for a while. Bezels shrinking is a huge change in design for TVs, monitors, laptops, phones.
People are just hearing things like "6.3 inch screen" and they think "wow, my old phone only had a 4.5 inch screen. This phone must be so much larger!"
I have an iphone mini… you need smaller than that? Why? It’s pretty darn small already.
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I would really like to upgrade my 12 mini to an newer Mini model if they ever made one!
I personally don't care I don't want a foldable phone ( my last job gave me a Flip 3 and it was a terrible experience) I'd rather phone with a removable battery than with a foldable screen.
I can't speak for the flip, but the fold 4 is fantastic. I can't imagine going back to a slab
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The only improvement I care about is bringing back physical buttons. Touch screens suck ass. I don’t give a fuck about cameras. I don’t give a fuck about folding bullshit. All I want is an interface that doesn’t blow dick. Apple is garbage along with the rest of them. Clueless fucking morons.
Most of the buyers think that touchscreens are very future and normal buttons are very past, because touchscreens are like magic, look! And because everybody uses them. And because more pixels. And because they don't have to reliably enter text most of the time. Especially not looking at the phone.
I think it all still gets down to people poking screens with their fingers thinking it looks smarter and more elegant (LOL). It has a lot to do with how it looks for others.
It’s more the fact that hardware buttons take away from screen real estate. Yeah, the touch method kinda sucks, but when you’re done with the keyboard it poofs away into more screen.
If you try to put a keyboard on a recent phone for example, and you don’t try to minimize it into oblivion, you’re losing about 4/5ths of the screen. That isn’t a crazy amount, but when you’re playing a game or watching a video, that loses out on quite a bit of space.
Not to mention the aspect ratio would be off for so many things.
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