The tech behind curving screens was just intended for just that, and at the most, used like unravelling scrolls. Its always seemed like its far more useful for immersive 360 displays and VR uses but instead here we are in clowncar phone company land. Folding the fucking thing in half to apply pressure to the middle of a display was never the point, and its bizarre so many tech companies have tried to apply it in the way, just assuming physics will yield to their mighty profit margins.
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Reviewers' Motorola Razr displays are already breaking and peeling at the fold after one week
- Thread starter RastaMentality
- Start date
They are looking for anything to build in as a differentiator. The market has grown stale.
Releasing broken product isn't the answer, though.
This tech shouldn't be in consumers hands yet. Like one day this will be really neat, but we are years away
I dont doubt it won't break, but the design is a step above the original Galaxy Fold.
I wouldn't say they aren't ready, this is the real world usage these companies need to improve the device and get them to their best form. The original iPhone would of never been without the Treo, windows CE, blackberry, and all the other horrible "smartphone" designs that got us to the iPhone design.
It might be the first one that actually works, why hate on Apple for coming out with products that get it right and people buy because it's high quality stuff that just works, stop hating hater
LG has a phone like that. You have a phone and a seprate case that holds another screen and battery
Why would the company that needs you to buy their phones every year make this tech more durable? They'll sell the same fragile shit, and make some PR piece about how that's brave and courageous, and half the industry will cheer them for it.
That's an interesting argument, I'll admit.
I don't think it's necessary to have the paying public test these devices to get to a good design, though. It's frankly irresponsible.
doubt apple will ever make one unless it becomes obvious that the market is moving that way, and I honestly doubt that will ever happen.
Yeah it's not ready for prime time. We will get there but the technology available now at a feasible price isn't working out right now. I appreciate the effort but these are not well made phones right now, and the price is pretty crazy, $1500 for the Razr with inferior tech inside and a shitty camera.
phone makers need to wait for Apple to do something innovative Or make an existing novelty good before they try their own thing apparently. It never works out for em.
And in the UK, this inferior load of shite could be yours for ÂŁ94 per month! A fucking month! For 24 months! Having paid ÂŁ100 for the phone! And that's only 10gb of mobile data! And then the screen breaks after a week!
Amazing. What a value proposition.
I think a folding iPad is a safe bet at some point, makes too much sense.
High quality stuff that just works?
Yes, a lie.
It's using the image that they had in the past (which was true at many points) in the present.
From the iPhone to AirPods, revolutionary stuff that changes the game
does it though?
it would have to be iPad mini size to have any real benefit in folding it and that's already a low volume product. Couple that with it being less durable than a normal iPad and the negatives quickly start to outweigh the positives.
User Warned: Avatar shaming
Jesus Christ , note to self, never try to correct someone who has no avatar because it's literally talking to a wall
All these foldable/dual screen devices just go to show how ahead of the game Nintendo was with the DS back in 2004. Not only touch screen, but now clamshell dual screen. Come to think of it, they were also the first to scrap the headphone jack with the SP. Look forward to shoulder buttons in all your favourite phone models a few years down the line too.
How does this happen with a 1500€ phone?
I mean on one hand you have this cool sci-fi gadget to show off, but at this price this thing feels like a straight up scam. Between the dubious build quality, mid-range specs and general lack of durability of these plastic screens, come on Motorola are you kidding me.
I mean on one hand you have this cool sci-fi gadget to show off, but at this price this thing feels like a straight up scam. Between the dubious build quality, mid-range specs and general lack of durability of these plastic screens, come on Motorola are you kidding me.
drop the folding singular screen for a while and focus on a dual glass screen setup that can open up and become a singular flush screen. There might be a slight seam in it, but that would be where the better designs rise above.
Well. There IS a market for it. Not everyone wants a big phone. Some people want a phone that is the size of the original iPhone, or smaller. the RAZR would give you the best of both worlds, where flipping it open gives you more screen real estate, and still be fairly thin when closed. I was ALL over this. And then I read about how there are creasing issues. :(
Point is, there is still lots and lots of ways to innovate on a cellular phone. There is still a lot of tech that they can cram into them, to make them even more space age than they are right now.
Point is, there is still lots and lots of ways to innovate on a cellular phone. There is still a lot of tech that they can cram into them, to make them even more space age than they are right now.
As much as this is good advice, folding phones with problems like this seem a bit beyond the usual year 1 cautionary tales. These seem like the kind of design issues that should be ironed out in the early days of product design. Some elements of these phones (like the way the screen can be physically separated from the rest of the device, easily and accidentally) should have been killed at the conceptual stage.
Phones right now are near-identical super-competent black slabs. They look the same, work the same, last for years, and increasingly the only reason to pay for an expensive phone is as a pointless status symbol. Samsung are already looking at declining sales as people upgrade less frequently, but they also have to worry about the possibility that people will start figuring out that they can buy mid-end (non-Samsung) devices for a whole lot less than a new Galaxy flagship phone, and struggle to see a performance difference even side-by-side.
That's also the reason for curved glass displays, the race to remove the bezels, and why this year's phones have half a dozen cameras and sensors on the back in a big clump. It's also part of the drive towards 5G and 120Hz+ screens. Phone companies just want anything at all that differentiates their phones from the others, and folding phones are an instantly noticeable differentiator.
Yeah, that's another really silly aspect. It's so far above flagship prices and so far below flagship specs. Unless someone values the flip feature as being worth well over a thousand Euro all by itself, there's a giant pile of better phones.
I mean, Samsung has barely learned from their own mistakes. The "glass" on their new foldable phone is uh... lacking. Scratches just as easily as the plastic. Of course they'll gladly replace it *one time* for a fee of $119!
Some companies just need to realize that the tech just isn't ready yet. Maybe in five years, maybe in two, maybe in ten. But, not right now.
the "tech" will never be ready, not to the level of slab phones at least. There are fundamental laws of physics we're fighting here.
I honestly doubt folding phones will be a thing, a more likely scenario is that we'll look back on it on 2030 as that weird thing we tried between 2019-2022 next to modular phones from a few years earlier.
hard materials break, soft materials bend. It's how it'll always be. We'll search for good enough until we either deal with the trade offs or we realize this was a bad idea and walk away from it.
I wonder how that'll be marketed in the EU and some other places. They're pretty strict about that sort of stuff, no?
Yeah I'm starting to lean this way, too. Foldable TV's and such will be fine, but a device you are *constantly* folding and unfolding, putting in your pocket with dust and keys, dropping it on the ground or in water, and so many other things is not gonna hold up well if it has to make all these concessions just to be able to fold.
Yeah, foldable screens just aren't going to work. The only thing that will work using this kind of design is a clam shell style phone with two separate screens that can act as "one" when opened and stacked on top of each other(like a Nintendo DS- kind of thing, or a PC using a dual monitor config but obviously with less space between screens.)
But this stiff will be dismissed in a few years as a fad, since the smartphone as is (single "slate" screen) is already perfect. Any time you introduce some kind of joint mechanism with the inherent moving parts you are just inviting problems that will never be an issue for a slate phone, as the joints can and will wear down over time and there will always be a limited shelf life.
But this stiff will be dismissed in a few years as a fad, since the smartphone as is (single "slate" screen) is already perfect. Any time you introduce some kind of joint mechanism with the inherent moving parts you are just inviting problems that will never be an issue for a slate phone, as the joints can and will wear down over time and there will always be a limited shelf life.
They wouldn't be wrong. A screen that remains in perfect condition after folding it thousands and thousands of times would be pretty inovative. We've been able to make screens that break when you fold them for as long as screens exist.
