Stagnation
If you are reading this blog post, there is a very high chance you own a smartphone. It may be a US$200
budget Android phone you bought 5 years ago, the latest iPhone Pro Max with 1TB of storage, or something in
between, but you do own one.
You don't need me to tell you that smartphones are everywhere, but it's only with the awareness of their
ubiquity that I can start my argument. Maybe you hate them, maybe you are trying to adapt a minimalist
usage, perhaps with those new "dumbphones" with their e-ink displays. Or perhaps you're like me, with 12
hours of screen time per day, but you do own one (or several).
If you have bought a smartphone around 2020, and you aren't the type to be convinced by the tech companies
that you really need the new one, you probably realized that the new models aren't that different from
yours. Two years ago I bought a Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, and besides gaming, it was probably more
capable of a phone than every budget and mid-tier device that came after it. Processors do get faster,
GPUs get more powerful, maybe even the cameras did get some change, but in truth, very little in terms of
substantial upgrades gets added. They do what they are supposed to do, and they do it well, if you see your
phone as a tool, there's no point in upgrading anymore, most likely.
The Note 20 Ultra in particular has a 108MP camera, 8K video recording, a 1440p 120Hz display and 5G
connectivity (if you got the 5G version)1. With 12GB of RAM and
256GB of storage on some versions (mine included), it's not just a capable phone, it does everything you
could want. It even has Dex! Sure, the
battery is lacking, and it may be old, but Samsung still sells a battery change if you want.
Despite what the previous paragraph may suggest, Samsung did not pay for me to write that (I would accept it
if they did, though). You can replace the Note 20 Ultra with an iPhone or a Pixel from the same era,
and the argument remains. Phones are boring devices, with solved issues, and new ones, in my
opinion, do not bring anything new to the table.
So, how do you sell new smartphones?
Foldables
One possible answer to that question is: foldables. It seems a natural evolution, we maximized screen real
estate; the latest iPhone Pro Max has a 6.9-inch screen, which is big—perhaps too big. But what if you just
said "bigger"? Well, you could walk around with a tablet, they make calls, for all purposes they are big
phones, which are just small computers, but that's not very practical. So, what if you had a magical thing,
that was a phone, and became a tablet when you opened it? That sounds like a great idea! Or, at least, an
idea worth selling.
Foldables are not that new, the Royole FlexPai came out in 2018, and Samsung released the Galaxy Fold in
2019 (which we may retroactively call the Z Fold 1). Sure, they weren't good, but it was over half a decade
ago, new is not the word to use with foldables anymore. Hell, it's already been a year since Huawei release
the Mate XT, triple foldable!
But, foldables still feel like new tech, don't they? If you ever had the chance to use one, be it on a store
or borrowed from someone who spends too much money on gadgets, your first thought was probably "Wow!" Those
things are cool in a way that it's hard to describe; I highly recommend bothering a Samsung salesperson to
mess around with one. They don't feel like regular tech, I mean sure, if you consider the iPhone as the
birth of smartphones, we're comparing a device type with almost 20 years of history to one that's just 7.
But 7 years in the age of the internet is a lot.
Foldables feel new because they are not mainstream devices, if you want to be a marketing nerd, they are on
the "early adopter" phase, with companies really trying to push it to the "early majority". You'd be hard
pressed to find one around you. This is anecdotal, but I am the only person I know that owns one, and every
person that ever saw it, had never seen one before.
Josh, from the YouTube channel "91Tech", because of the release of the new Galaxy Z Fold 7, recently made a
video about foldables2, and in it, he discusses what he calls the 4
major challenges of adoption of these devices:
price, durability, design and practicality. I'll leave the discussion of durability and
design for someone who is an engineer, it's the other two that I care about.
I'll wait when it gets cheaper
Before I start, I want to clarify that most of this entire blog post references "book" foldables, not
the
clamshell ones, like the Z Flip 7. Not because they aren't cool, but because they are positioned as very
different devices, which is out of my scope here.
This is a common point brought up by people, and it is a valid one. Foldables are expensive, the Z Fold 7
starts at US$2,000, arguably the best foldable on the market at the time of writing this, but still, 2000
dollars is a lot of money, depending on your country it is even more expensive. Thankfully, the adoption
cycle usually means that as the years pass, the price of the technology goes down, so, cheap foldables soon!
Except, no, not really, they have only gone up in price, and with Apple rumored to enter this market next
year, it is likely that the price will only go up.
The reason for that is simple, but two-fold (haha, get it?). The first is genuine, foldables are complicated
devices, with expensive tech that is essentially only used by foldables, making it particularly expensive to
develop, expensive to manufacture, and, therefore, expensive to buy. This leads to the second reason,
because they are so expensive to make, it just doesn't make any sense to position them as anything but
extremely premium, high-end devices, and that is a huge part of the marketing. These are not cheap devices
for the average Luna. These are devices for the business person who needs great multitasking, or, if you
believe the latest commercial, for the owner of a local restaurant using Gemini to fix a broken motor..
Samsung, Huawei, Apple (probably, soon) and the others have nothing to gain by making a cheap foldable, if
you are
buying a device under 1,000 dollars, you probably think of it as a tool, you need it to work, not for it to
have fancy new tech you don't need. Samsung may try to sell you the Z Flip, however. They would likely enjoy
it being seen as a 'cheaper foldable' since it was never positioned as the same kind of device as the Z
Fold. However, it is still a foldable, and it is still expensive, with all the caveats foldables have.
So, what do you do with it?
The second point is practicality, and it is a very important one. This company wants you to spend thousands
of dollars, so, what does the device even do? Is it worth the price?
The answer to that is, perhaps unsurprisingly, "no, not really". If you were to, objectively, list the
things
that you can do only with a foldable, you would have a very short list. Or perhaps no list at all. Sure, you
can split the screen in two (or three), but do you need that often? Given most people, even power users and
"business people", have used slabs for years, and never complained, I doubt it is a common use case. Just
swap between apps.
But, this seems weird, why have I written so much about foldables, if I'm not going to tell you why you
should have one? Well, because, for once, I think foldables still hold to a dying flame of interest in the
tech world, they are interesting. They are cool, and hell do I love using them. But they
are not for the average Luna, but I argue they also aren't for the business person Samsung is selling them
to. They are for the enthusiast, the person that loves tech, and wants to have the latest and greatest, even
if it is not really that useful. The person who is willing to pay a premium to hold what, somehow, feels
like the future of technology in their hands, even if it isn't. Are you that person? Maybe, up to you,
still, go try one, even if for giggles.
Conclusion
If you watch the video I mentioned earlier, you may think that I just stole what Josh said, but I would say
we just more or less agree on the topic. Foldables are not the future of smartphones, they are a niche
product that will, for the time being, live alongside the slab phones, I'm sure they'll become more common,
but mainstream? It seems too much.
If you are reading this, and somehow asking yourself "should I buy a foldable?", I would say that asking
that is probably a sign you'd have a great time with one. I've had my Z Fold 5 for a year now, and am
waiting for a Z Fold 7 to arrive, and I love this thing. This is a point I disagree with Josh, it never gets
old, you may not be surprised anymore when it folds, but it is always really damn cool, and
perhaps
that is the point of foldables, they are not meant to be practical, they are meant to be fun, and that they
accomplish really well. A fun phone, in this economy? Crazy.
Footnotes
- Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra on GSMArena. ↩
- "Are Foldables the Future of Smartphones?", by 91Tech. ↩
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