While I am impressed, I still would never actually buy a folding smartphone.
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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I bought one about a year ago expecting the gimmick to get tiresome but honestly I love it. I bought one a couple models old so it didn't even cost me that much, I picked up a Z Fold 2 around when they were releasing the Z Fold 4, I think. So far it's been great and I absolutely love being able to fold the screen open for gaming or for reading. The single front screen is a bit skinny but you get used to it.
I've read about 3x more books since I got it than I used to, and emulator gaming is getting new life (as well as native games like Polytopia or Slay The Spire). I honestly recommend them, which I didn't think I'd find myself doing.
I don't see myself buying one either. I much prefer the current form factor.
To me the folding thing is nothing more than a gimmick to try to get people to shell out even more money for a phone. I would much rather go with something on the higher end of the low-end, think around 400.00 or less and have money for a laptop. I don't see the point of spending as much money on a fucking phone as you would a decent laptop. Makes no sense.
For many (most?) people, a phone gets a lot more use than a laptop
Flip phone is stupid, but a folding phone like the Galaxy Fold actually makes total sense. Bigger screen like a small tablet, while still able to easily fit in your pocket.
They're cool. I absolutely would get one. But not for nearly twice the price. It's just far too much of a premium.
Why not?
I love mine, mainly because it's so small when folded; it's like in the œlden days, when small was cool and you could actually fit your phone in your pocket without cargo pants. Folded, it's more robust than a candybar phone, and I don't worry at all about sitting on it.
I look forward to better use of the 45° format, and standardization of the API for the cover screen (for more apps).
Something tells me dunking it in water egg flour mixture is not normal wear and tear.
So are they going to start over and just flip it open and close like a normal human being or give up after few days and chuck it out of an airplane at 30k feet?
It's not a matter of if, but when it will break.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
If you’re wondering how many times Samsung’s latest foldable flip phone, the Galaxy Z Flip 5, might survive when subjected to the stresses and strains of the real world, YouTuber Mrkeybrd has an answer for you: 401,146.
Between August 2nd and today, his channel has run a livestream of the phone being continuously folded and unfolded by a series of testers.
The experiment subjected the phones to a large amount of variation in the speed and force with which they were folded and unfolded, which arguably reflects the kinds of stresses actual people, rather than machines, will put the phone under.
But the Flip 5 appeared to be broadly usable until the 400,000 mark, when it was submerged in water and covered in flour and eggs.
Its hinge appeared to grow increasingly unusable after that point, until the YouTuber called an end to the experiment when a pink line was visible running down the right-hand side of the screen.
In a similar test last year, Mrkeybrd folded and unfolded the Galaxy Z Flip 3 418,500 times before calling the experiment to an end.
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