I love the clamshell form factor, but it should be two screens, not one delicate one stretched such that it will always show a crease and will fail after a year…
Yeah, man. Look at how well-protected those screens are when you flip it closed! I don’t care what version of Gorilla Glass+++ you have, no one’s throwing a smartphone in a backpack or laptop bag without good screen protection…
I mean, yes, but DS hinges are actually pretty prone to cracking.
But at least you can replace the shell if it happens.
So, the first one I had (1st gen DS) fell of a table on the hinge and broke. I eventually got a new case from China and got it working. Second one, 3DS XL, I was playing around with a katana and struck my leg, but I had a 3DS in a baggy pocket so I hit that instead, right on the hinge. It survived though, just has a small battle scar now.
I took this as a sign to not use foldable electronics.
Edit: Now that I think about it… My GBA SP didn’t get any of its hinges hurt while in my possession… so 2/3 I suppose.
I’ve owned GBA, NDS, 3DS, and my brother had the DS Lite. Every Gen 1 DS I’ve seen has had its hinge break eventually. All the others on this list seem more durable. My GBA in particular went through some rough spots.
But yeah, adding moving parts is always going to add more points of failure.
Laptops work pretty well in that regard. Sure, I saw a few with broken hinges over the years, but saying that hinges don’t work is overblown IMO.
(And I say this as an owner of a 1st gen DS with broken hinge. That was probably a design error.)
I wonder what the overlap in demographics are for Nintendo DS owners and katana owners? I’m imagining it’s statistically significant
Wasn’t the Surface Duo actually 2 seperate screens?
Have you used a phone like this for a while or are you saying how you think you’ll feel?
i was hoping for a vertical iphone flip phone so it would be smaller oh well
Folding up like that is potentially very robust if it’s done right, keeps your screen safe. Personally I’d also go for a screen+keyboard combo (wow I just invented the laptop). A thin keyboard that doubles up as a screen protector, that should be a thing
We used to have a few designs like that.
The outsides were just basic phone, so they were durable
I used to own one of these bad boys
Ridiculously cool, you basically transform into James Bond if you’re using one of those. It was actually quite practical as well. But what I think would be a good modern take on that would be essentially a phone case that’s a keyboard, so you keep the basic smartphone design intact, with the processor battery etc behind the screen. No reason for it not to be removable either. There’s some generic large versions of that but if that was part of the phone design you could do it very compact and cute.
One of my favorite phones I ever owned.
Fuck I miss that phone. LG Navigator 10/10
Also the screen on the outside (if any) should probably be an eInk display and it should be at least as sturdy as a nokia 8110 when it’s closed…
I just want a phone that I can comfortably reach all points on with one thumb without having to juggle it about.
So when foldables started getting attention i was hoping they’d make smaller phones that unfolded to have average sized screens.
Instead we got average sized phones that unfold in to a tablet. Even the vertical folding ones are too wide.
Drives me crazy how small phones died because “not enough demand” but a fragile gimmicky $2000 folding phone is perfectly commercially viable
All tech is killing off budget options because of the increasing percentage of wealth owned by the top 1% who will just buy the most expensive option without regard for features or practicality.
Small phones would be cheap and cheap phones break the illusion that 2000$ phones are normal.
It has nothing to do with demand, it’s just that the bottom 99% isn’t a profitable market segment anymore.
Certainly has not bern a shortage of demand for the duo, people have been losing their minds over the thing
Call me crazy but I miss 16:9 5"/5.5" standard smartphones(aka pre 2018) made it possible to comfortably 1-hand. Then they had to switch to doom-scroll long ratio sizes.
You want small? There you go: https://gadgetbond.com/bluefox-nx1-4-inch-compact-android-15-smartphone/
But yeah, it’s a shame there isn’t really a market with competition. Basically all serious phones are already too big for my taste. I have an iPhone 13 Mini and that is already slightly too big and I couldn’t even replace that with a similar sized one if I wanted to.
The Unihertz Titan 2 Elite is surprisingly small. The Minimal Phone 2 might be as well. And they have physical keyboards — yay.
sadly, no 5G on these phones
Oof a cutout on such a small phone is awful. Just give it a little forehead (and chin) then it can also fit in an even bigger battery
What’s that? Smartphone for ants?
Unihertz Jelly Star
I loved my jelly star (it’s battery died this year). I would still like something like 1.5x the size of the jelly star. The jelly max kinda disappointed me with somehow removing features from the smaller phone whilst somehow still being as chonky.
I don’t use Android. Can you de-google it at least somewhat? I would consider giving it to a kid as a cheaper harder to break phone.
Running LineageOS on my Jelly Star. Only thing that doesn’t work is the nifty LED ring on the back.
Thanks
Moto razr and I believe there’s a samsung one which does just that
Of all the foldables, I liked moto’s implementation the best. I don’t want them to fold out to a larger screen. I want them to fold into a smaller form.
I’m sad they didn’t keep the retro razr design language from the second generation onwards and instead just copied samsungs design language and tweaked it. I really liked how the original had a chin that slid the display under slightly when folding so the fold didn’t have to be as drastic and crease inducing
Didn’t one company basically made a GBA SP kind of phone, where you fold vertically to make a small square?
Edit: samsung galaxy z flip i think
Yeah, I’m on Pixel 10a, which is ostensibly the same size as the 7a I had prior, and for that I give a real half-hearted thanks to Google for at least not making it bigger. I still miss phones the size of my s4. I want a phone that discourages watching long form content, and we’re unfortunately in the opposite direction.
How much could it cost to design and mass produce a phone that’s exactly the size I want?
I had to stop with the pixels after the 3. The 3 was already my upper limit on size and i wanted a slightly smaller phone. Sadly at the time i upgraded their was only bigger phones and then the jelly star which is tiny. I got the jelly star and it lasted me a good few years before the battery fully crapped out on me, but i would still prefer a phone in-between those two sizes.
I have seen one of these, folds lengthways into more of a square shape. No idea what the model is though.
Z flip series from samsung. Crazy expensive though, I don’t know if there are any reasonable alternatives
Motorola’s Razr is probably 300-400 less. But Ive never owned any of them
The problem with all of those types is that they’re still too wide to reach across with a firm grip.
Original gif:
Man, I love the update to this classic.
Bro and you would fucking SNAP that flip phone down to end a call. That’s the only reason people talked on the phone in the day. So they could snap the phone down at the end. Once we traded slap for slab there was no reason to talk on the phone anymore which is why we just text now.
I had a Nokia 7110 and the slide of the Keyboard Cover is a tactile Sensation I still yearn for…
When you bought it did a delivery guy hand it to you in your cubicle without anything else and then it immediately started ringing or was that only available with the 8110
Apple iPhone duo != all foldable phones.
There’s more out there, folks.
Impossible. Apple just came out with it. Others couldn’t have copied Apple that fast. Stop lying.
This comic apparently comes out when the first foldable smartphone comes out, which have the similar issue.
The title of this comic (which is from 2019), is: “Galaxy Fold vs Flip Phone”. OP unfortunately didn’t include the title. Nor the bonus panel.
ah that phone went a week without charging, which has as much to do with how much we used phones back as with how fast smart phones deplete battery.
Weird how my gameboy uses less battery than my tv
Your TV has batteries? 'Splain it to me Lucy!
This is the moment technology peaked
Oh my god, you old bastid! I remember those! I never had one, but I remember the 30 seconds they lasted!
It needs a battery-backup for the built-in hot mike, storage and wifi. What if there was a power outage and somebody said something exploitable? It might miss something marketable. Or worse: viable blackmail.
Interesting! My TV is old and doesn’t get used much. So thank you for explaining it to me. I have learned something!
Surely they at least thought about adding a thick border to prevent the screens from rubbing together, right?
The damage happens at the fold. Not sure anything can be done about that.
make a hinge that doesn’t break and take out your fragile bendy screen?
there is a korean video where it broke in the same spot, and the part of the hinge that broke was very thin.
ffs, every other manufacturer has a fold phone, and none of them experience this high a failure rate, this quickly too.
ffs, every other manufacturer has a fold phone, and none of them experience this high a failure rate, this quickly too.
We don’t know what the failure rate is, as of yesterday there were “at least 10 different confirmed cases”. And I remember Samsung also had similar issues on their first fold phone for example.
Either way fold phones are stupid as far as I’m concerned and never should’ve been invented. Just another way to part idiots and their money.
Before release: They took time to perfect their product so they will beat the other folds After release: It’s a first gen
I don’t really think being the first gen is a great excuse
Naw the 2025 Razr is pretty much perfect, I got it for $165 at release.
how in the hell did you get it for $165?
are you sure you didn’t mean $650?
Bought a total wireless phone with a year of service and “upgraded” $25 at Walmart
I never got the appeal of bleeding edge smartphones. Then again I have boring life.
With computers, you have compute for working or gaming. Powerful phones are for media consumption? Is everyone really leading such interesting lives as they project on social media such that the latest phone features are a must have?
For some it stems from living through the early years of smartphones with single core CPUs, only enough RAM to keep one app open at a time, and interactions that were a complete choppy laggy mess.
Back then every new (non-budget) phone upgrade was a ridiculously big jump in performance. If you lived through that era it became a somewhat normal thing to do every couple of years assuming you had the means. I think many phone buyers today are still repeating that old behavior of thinking “OMG I can’t wait to use the next model that will be 5x better than this old one” but truly those days are long gone.
Now we look forward to only slightly (single digit percentage) increases in performance. And most new features get back ported to older models so you don’t even have a software reason to upgrade unless your model is no longer supported.
Tech Demos keep showing rollable screens, and those look way more interesting to me than foldable
But all the demos are still not what I want, I’d want it to go from pager sized to feature phone sized
YES to pager sized phone!
I have little hands and don’t want thumb tendonitis
I’m more interested in it taking less pant space, but I am glad there’s others that want the same
Trying to get a < 6inch smartphone is almost impossible by now, and me and my stubbly fucking Fingers arent happy about it
As foretold in the ancient scripts.
As someone who has a foldable, im happy that my ebook reader comes with me everywhere. Its also gotten me into comics when I would have never given a damn before.
I love my z fold, the only thing is the screen protector peels and can somehow damage the screen if you hold off on replacing it. Ask me how I know.
If they weren’t a bazillion dollars I would love a tri-screen foldable (if it supported Graphene).
locally, it is cheaper than the iphone duo. although it is about 2 years old at this point.
I am talking about the Huawei mate XT. there seems to be a new one in the works though.
Still a bazillion. But where is locally?
“Because Apple made a shitty foldable, it must mean every foldable is shitty”
The layman thinks apple is who invents all consumer technology. I love my Fold 7. I always find other phones to be way too wide
“Just because this comic was posted after Apple made something shitty, it must be about that”
I mean, this comic is titled “Galaxy Fold vs Flip Phone” and is from 2019. Nothing about Apple.
