Indeed. I would be ok with a foldable phone made of two screens, but i don't want a foldable screen. It's like having a painting reproduced across two pages in an art book. It kills the representation.
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Oppo Says Smartphone Innovation Has 'Hit a Wall' As It Teases First Foldable Device
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At this moment I really don’t feel the need for a foldable device. Concerns about durability are prevailing. It’s nice to see improvements in this field, anyway.
Foldables are short term "Niche" solution to the small screen real estate situation in phones compared to PCs, till AR glasses takes over both.
Foldables are a solution in search of a problem.
As a cynic that's how you see it. As someone who understands product dev and experienced OLED burn in from a 2015 Google Nexus 6P I perfectly understand why Apple took that long.
Why be 1st to market with an immature tech that will only cause bad press becase oLeD BuRn-iN aPplE recall
Not to mention it may eat into iPad sales.
I had a multiple Ericson and Sony-Ericssson 2G feature phones that were foldable. The hinge always broke down.
That's why i prefer the candybar-form factor for the past 2 decades. 1 less thing to break
By the time Apple Glasses ‘take over’, that’s likely easily five years at a minimum. There’s plenty of time for foldables to mature and offer more stable pricing. Foldables don’t have to be a main stream product to be successful, they have to be wisely engineered and useful enough with appropriate consumer pricing.
Maybe. But a bigger problem is that consolidation has slowed down innovation a bit as well. There are only a few companies capable of building this cutting edge tech. It’s going to have to either come from Samsung or Apple. I don’t see Intel, Microsoft, Google, or especially OnePlus really having the vision and dedication to change that.
Not to bring up the old “if Jobs were still around” trope but I do have to wonder how things would be. He seemed to be the only tech CEO (besides maybe Zuckerberg) that never got bored with his company. Every company (except maybe Intel since they are the oldest) I mentioned above had its founder leave to spend more time with their money a long time ago. Cook is definitely dedicated but I wonder about his vision.
What's the point? It's thicker when you fold it.
Why would you want to fold your phone?
Spend the R&D money on OS software and battery.
Why would you want to fold your phone?
Spend the R&D money on OS software and battery.
Why not to buy a foldable phone:
1) Costs too much
2) Costs way too much
3) Can’t play iTunes movies (the ones that don’t work with Movies Anywhere, which only exists in the USA and only covers certain distributions)
1) Costs too much
2) Costs way too much
3) Can’t play iTunes movies (the ones that don’t work with Movies Anywhere, which only exists in the USA and only covers certain distributions)
Yup. My iPhone fits in my pockets. So what does a foldable bring?
A fork, a spoon, a knife, a rolling pin, a screwdriver—some things just work as is without trying radically changing other than for aesthetic reasons.
Today you can get a phone in a size that suits you and actually does far more than what most people use.
Making a smartphone foldable is just a gimmick that doesn’t really address anything. We had foldable phones before—they were called flip phones—and they gave way to the superior smartphone design. At least flip phones didn’t have a crease in the display screen.
Next thing for a smartphone? Maybe give it Star Trek tricorder like abilities?
What is driving this is not genuine improvement to solve problems. It’s about forestalling the inevitable saturation point as phone sales slow down due to most people wanting/needing a phone already having one.
The same happened with televisions. For fifty years television was a CRT that came in varied forms, but it was still a tube. Then came true flatscreens that started small and got bigger. Now it’s a game of higher resolutions to the point of absurdity. A new standard is introduced to boost sales until sales soften again and a new boost is needed again. We had 780p, 1080p, 3D, UHD, 2K, 4K and on and on… Resolution so good that reality looks blurred in comparison.
Oh, and no one actually broadcasts in 4K or even 1080p. Your HD TV station is actually 780p. 1080p is found on Blu Ray discs. 4K is something you can get over the internet, but you need a HUGE display to really appreciation it
Today you can get a phone in a size that suits you and actually does far more than what most people use.
Making a smartphone foldable is just a gimmick that doesn’t really address anything. We had foldable phones before—they were called flip phones—and they gave way to the superior smartphone design. At least flip phones didn’t have a crease in the display screen.
Next thing for a smartphone? Maybe give it Star Trek tricorder like abilities?
What is driving this is not genuine improvement to solve problems. It’s about forestalling the inevitable saturation point as phone sales slow down due to most people wanting/needing a phone already having one.
The same happened with televisions. For fifty years television was a CRT that came in varied forms, but it was still a tube. Then came true flatscreens that started small and got bigger. Now it’s a game of higher resolutions to the point of absurdity. A new standard is introduced to boost sales until sales soften again and a new boost is needed again. We had 780p, 1080p, 3D, UHD, 2K, 4K and on and on… Resolution so good that reality looks blurred in comparison.
Oh, and no one actually broadcasts in 4K or even 1080p. Your HD TV station is actually 780p. 1080p is found on Blu Ray discs. 4K is something you can get over the internet, but you need a HUGE display to really appreciation it
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Major innovation ends when there's a paradigm shift that lands on the most ideal implementation for that particular product and market. Any innovation beyond that only happens as long as it fits inside that new paradigm as most companies are incapable of thinking outside the box. The paradigm shifts and major changes usually are more about interaction than it is about form factor, so I wouldn't expect anything to come from a company that's basically just an OEM.
I seriously doubt Tim is bored with Apple and does not have a "vision". You can't release product until the tech is ready. It's a matter of maturing the technology before it goes in a product. The two products that are currently rumored are much, much more sophisticated in implementation and technology than anything Steve ever released.
Apple has never cared about eating into other product sales. Steve used to always say that the iPod killer would be another Apple product and he was right.
Here's how I see this proclamation by Oppo... They think innovation has hit a wall, so they gave up on innovating and just released a foldable phone. They'll wait until some other company innovates and just do what they did.
Samsung announced the galaxy fold all the way back in 2019.
It’s almost 2022.
There hasn’t been much in the way of improvement, or price reduction, or adoption, or any new reasons to purchase a folding phone in the past three years.
Meanwhile, three years after the iPhone first launched, it, and it’s copycats, were must-have products.
Same with the iPod, by 2004, three years after the iPod first launched, it was Apple‘s biggest product.
Same with the iPad, and the Apple Watch.
All of these products caught on extremely quickly, became affordable within their first three years, and became household products and must buys.
It’s been three years since the original galaxy fold, and… nothing.
Do you honestly think another five years will change the trajectory?
Because personally, I think that folding phones are just the new 3-D TVs, something that huge companies spend half a decade convincing us that we need, until slowly they just fizzle out because no one actually liked them
The fact that they have to say innovation has hit a wall before introducing "what's next" proves that this is a solution looking for a problem. Smart phone design has indeed hit a wall, and that's not a bad thing. The ultimate vision of a touchscreen smartphone was always for it to be a single pane of glass/screen, and we're basically there.
"What's next for smartphones" is similar to other legacy tech form factors like laptops, TVs, etc. They have reached peak form and will simply continue to be refined/perfected as they slowly yield ground (becoming more niche) to newer, more revolutionary form factors (AR glasses soon, I guess).
"What's next for smartphones" is similar to other legacy tech form factors like laptops, TVs, etc. They have reached peak form and will simply continue to be refined/perfected as they slowly yield ground (becoming more niche) to newer, more revolutionary form factors (AR glasses soon, I guess).
Innovation hasn't stopped. The smart phone market is pretty mature at this point and they've all mostly packed in all the features that people actually want. There are only so many things people want to do on their phone. At this point pretty much all of them are just improving camera and chip speed on the hardware side and constantly updating the software.