Well Samsung has supposedly sold at least 400,0000-500,000 of them so obviously those people.
I love people who think what they want or don’t want represents everyone. There is obviously a market for these as they keep being made, yet this same inane question is being asked. These are very obviously for people that want a large screen in a smaller package. I’m not sure why this is so hard for people to comprehend.
Some of you think it’s a stupid idea, we get it. But acting like you don’t comprehend it’s purpose or who would want it is disingenuous at best.
This. Samsung is ramping up for 6-7 million this time around, that's getting close to Note sales. Granted it's still a niche product, and may always be a niche product like the Note series, but still enough to garner a profit and also advance a stale market.
What really bothers me are the Darwin award winners who espouse the same tired "This is a solution in search of a problem" If they put just a bit of thought into such a short sighted answer they would see that the problem is clear; people like larger screens but larger screens are less portable. There, that wasn't particularly difficult was it? For my personal use this frees me from having to stick my iPad mini into my back pocket, now I only have to carry around one device, sync one device, charge one device, etc., and it's footprint is very similar to a traditional smartphone.
Now with that said we have to look at the paradigm as a whole, and not just lump all these phones as "foldables" The foldable phone is only one way to achieve the desired results, that of a larger screen that can be made smaller and thus more portable. One other option that is promising are rollable displays, just as one example. Personally I think the entire paradigm will be huge and will supplant today's phones, just as "phablets" supplanted smaller smartphones (regardless of the same naysayers with the same inane "who wants a phablet" commentary). Between 1) consumers wanting larger screens and 2) more consumers using their mobile devices as their primary method of work, play, internet access, etc., it's just a no brainer that a paradigm which gives them larger screens will become dominant. Whether it's foldable tech, or some other tech is moot because the market will advance towards the best solution naturally.
While I'm not necessarily defending foldable technology by itself, once again preferring to see it as a larger paradigm of shrinking phones regardless of method, I still get miffed when it's called half baked. I've been using a Fold 2 as a daily driver for months now and there is nothing half baked about it at all. Are there things I would like to see changed or improved, of course there are, but there are things about vanilla smartphones I'd like to see changed and/or improved as well. The "perfect" device doesn't exist, and in many senses I can turn around and compared to my Fold 2 call non shrinking phones the half baked devices because they don't satisfy my needs.
Anyhoo I hope everyone takes a couple of deep breaths and lets the oxygen seep into their brain before they just wantonly blurt out how half baked and useless it is to have a larger screened device with the same portability as your current phone. The paradigm may not be for YOU, but the paradigm does make sense and does solve a problem for those of us who do want a larger screen.
The size isn't a problem either and it looks like Samsung is shrinking the footprint of the Z fold 3. It's really no more cumbersome than a regular smartphone with an Otter Box. YMMV
