For all the talk about how boring smartphones have become, why hasn’t the alternative taken off more? I’m talking about foldable phones. These devices aren’t the new kids on the block they once were, as we’re coming up on the seventh generation of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. Instead, I think folding phones are in more of a teenage phase. Hear me out.
These unique marvels of technology are maturing to the point where the hardware is reliable, though not fully. They are more than capable of handling complex tasks, even if it takes a bit more effort to figure out the best way to use the tools a folding phone possesses. All the while, they offer great ways to find entertainment on a larger scale. Foldables are everything a traditional slab phone is, but with a little patience, much more is possible. However, without proper guidance and tools, regardless of the potential, folding phones and teenagers will struggle. After seven years, app development and adoption haven’t picked up as we’d hoped.
Read our review
Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold: Only pro on the inside
‘Pro’ just means ‘expensive’ here
It’s about more than just choices
In hardware and software
Choice is a wonderful thing in life and in tech. Still, it’s about more than having a choice. If purely having options made everyone happy, we’d have more than three phone brands competing in the US. Because we did at one point, but when competition is fierce, any tiny misstep can be magnified to the point of dooming a brand. This applies to foldable phones and the progress being made.
We don’t have much of that in the US regarding smartphones, which also applies to foldables. Europe and Asia have access to all we do and more with brands like Honor’s Magic V3, Oppo’s Find N5, and Huawei’s Mate XT. While we are short on brand options in the US, across the globe, foldable phone adoption hasn’t taken off like many hoped. Look around you the next time you’re out and about. How many folding phones do you notice? Likely not many, regardless of where you live.
Looking closer at the US market, we only have two or three brands on the Android side. If we didn’t have foldables in those lineups, our options for choice would be more desolate. Even with brands that consumers have seemingly chosen to be the few, folding phones aren’t becoming the norm. There are likely many reasons for this. Maybe it could be a lack of choice, but I doubt it. More likely, it’s high prices, hardware that is less durable than slab phones, software that feels incomplete, and the lack of a premium camera experience.
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6 reasons why I’ll never buy a folding phone again
It’s hard to overlook some of its glaring drawbacks
Lacking support
In purchasing and software
As much as I love my Pixel 9 Pro Fold, it’s not perfect. Battery life and charging speeds are underwhelming, and it’s a brick compared to its European and Asian counterparts, to name a couple. While I enjoy the flexibility I get from using a phone that can go from being a slab phone to a mini tablet in no time, I do not utilize the larger display as much as I could.
I don’t open my phone unless I’m multitasking between two apps, deep-diving into a story, or watching videos. Sometimes, accomplishing those tasks isn’t as fluid as it should be. Many commonly used apps don’t scale properly on the larger screen. If the app does, the content doesn’t. Sometimes, when looking at a website in Chrome on the main display, I have to close the phone to see the entire page because parts get cut off, and I can’t zoom in or out to fix it.
However, even more apps don’t scale properly when viewed on the main display. While phone manufacturers try to find ways within the device’s core software to overcome some of those issues, it doesn’t always work. Many consumers aren’t going to mess with settings to get it to work. Then, there’s the big selling point of running multiple apps simultaneously, side by side. When I do this, I sometimes get a pop-up saying the app doesn’t support split screen.
Android is still working out how to support foldables best, but at this point, even Google can’t get it right on its folding phone. How can we expect others to? We need apps that scale properly on the larger screen and become more useful. Still, we shouldn’t be surprised that folding phones aren’t hitting how we’d like, considering the well-documented struggles in the Android tablet space. The issues we see on the folding phone side of things are similar to what tablets have fought for years.
Finding a way forward
In a bigger way
Android smartphones have matured to the point where they are so good that manufacturers have begun recycling designs for multiple years with only minor tweaks. The software on them is much the same way, so it has been left up to AI to be the driving force for buying a new phone. Perhaps these reasons are why app developers aren’t as keen to pick up the pace of creating experiences for foldables. Maybe things have become so stale that all involved in smartphones have been lulled into a comfortable state of satisfaction. Still, getting excited about the uncertainty of what should be exciting isn’t worth it.
We’re in a chicken-or-egg situation, where consumers may not buy until the hardware and software give them a reason to buy it, or developers won’t create the software until more consumers buy the devices. Regardless of the cause, folding phones are too valuable to the smartphone ecosystem as a whole, and someone needs to step up and find a way to ensure success.
