It's time mobile devs started to think seriously about foldable smartphones Folding smartphones have been with us for six years without winning much market share, but after two weeks using Samsung's latest model, and recent reports of surging sales in the category, it feels to me like dual-screened devices are something developers now need to consider. For those who came in late, Samsung set one …
Few developers seem to have made much effort to adapt Android applications to tablets, so I suspect their enthusiasm to embrace yet another form factor might be limited. There are plenty of apps that don't even notice if you rotate the screen.
If the number of people with foldable phones becomes significant, developers of major commercial apps will presumably want those apps to at least work. There may be some niche categories of app which can exploit the particular features of these phones, but what do the rest get in return for additional development, testing and maintenance costs?
Might be different if Apple comes up with a foldable - the revenue per user is significantly higher.
there are still lots of iPhone Apps that haven't been re-written for iPads
For most apps it doesn't make any difference. If I run a weather app on a tablet there's more screen space so I guess it could show more information at once rather than making you expand a tab or switch screens to see it. But why bother, how would that translate into additional revenue for the developer? Everything is "free" these days, with subscription to avoid ads or unlock additional features. I guess they could have a tablet subscription, but will that pay back the developer or just annoy subscribers? If they make it more expensive for everyone to subsidize the tablet features, maybe now people switch to another weather app that's cheaper because the developer didn't bother to support tablets which few will care about.
For stuff like movies it can treat the tablet as a big phone - you use up all the pixels you can regardless of the physical size. Ditto for games, tablets are a bit higher resolution so more work for the GPU but the higher end tablets have beefier SoCs that can handle that.
Plus there's a distinction - the iPad store is separate from the iPhone store. I suppose there could be a separate store for foldables where you know you're getting something that fully supports it, but you'd still want to be able to download from the regular phone store or you'd finding the pickings pretty sparse at least at first and maybe always.
>” If I run a weather app on a tablet there's more screen space”
Trouble is that doesn’t seem to be the case; the iPhone app is typically displayed in an iPhone shaped slot in one specific orientation, with screen pinch/zoom disabled.
>” Plus there's a distinction - the iPad store is separate from the iPhone store.”
Originally they were the same store. It was several years after launch Apple started to distinguish iOS from iPadOS and made iPadOS more capable.
However, many iPhone apps appear in both stores, yet the iPadOS app is just the iOS app that has been certified iPad compatible…
So would tend to agree Apple would probably create a third store for foldables, but you will need to read the small print and/or trial the app, to know if the app actually uses the folding screen capabilities.
The percentage of folding phones sold compared to the total number of phones sold is minuscule. There isn't any standardization either, the place where they fold (vertically or horizonally) or the number of folding segments (2 or 3) vary depending on the phone model. So not only would the app have to handle displaying different whether the phone is folded or unfolded, it would have to account for the different segments if it wants to do anything useful like display video or a game in one place and other information or like captions or game stats in another.
Additionally you want it to handle screen rotation which would be different handling for the different fold types plus the front/folded screen. Then you have to account for multitasking if the OS supports running 2 or 3 apps side by side on the folded segments, restricting your app into its one segment.
That's a lot of work for 1% of the market!
Or maybe... just design apps for a range of screen resolutions (pixel count divided by default text size in the device settings), and the ability to shift between them.
Then it doesn't matter what the resolution is, or whether it's rotated... just have that as a second screen resolution and switch to it.
If you want to be fancy have your own scaling in the options as well, which could override the device default either once or permenantly.
Most of the article isn’t about foldable phones, it was more of a review of a specific phone. The issues of protruding camera and apps not resizing (or supporting screen rotation) are common across android and iPhone/iPad.
The only real potential benefit of a folding phone is the merging of phone with a tablet into something that is just about pocketable;.
A desireable attribute (pocketability) of a mobile phone, that had largely been achieved prior to the rise of the large screen smart phone.
Yes, the article was like an advert. Also Android is miserably poor on tablets and Chromebooks, but better than Windows tablets. It's not a developer thing but the fact it's an OS designed for touch screen phones, and in many respects on larger screens application GUI is worse than Windows 3.x
It's not a developer issue. It's Android, which Google chops and changes between versions, adding and removing split screen, multiple windows (which lack UI elements) and even a Win9x-like PC mode.
Google started losing the plot with Version 4.x
I have a Razr because it is easily pocketable - it can just drop into a trouser pocket. Plus its screen is completely protected.
I don't have to put it in a shirt pocket where it could drop out or be snatched, and gets in the way - I can ignore it until needed.
I am not a developer, but from my limited use of virtual machines or remote session in Windows, I have never seen any issues when resizing the window. I guess the OS takes care of that, and applications don't have to care. Is this the case?
Are mobile OSs so feature-restricted that smartphones are in essence shitty computers?
Cast your mind back to the early days of the 'net, when lazy developers defined fixed dimensions for all objects on a page.
Got a higher resolution monitor than the developer had? Tough, you'll just have to put up with a page that occupies a quarter or your screen.
Same thing here. There's no shortage of methods to elegantly scale an app's output and make it layout-agnostic - but there are far too many developers who refuse to think about anything more than their own environment.
Cast your mind back to the earlier days of the 'net, when "subnotebooks" and "netbooks", with reasonably-small form-factors existed, were not limited to ChromeOS, Android, or iOS, could run nearly any x86-based OS you wanted, had usable keyboards, had easily-swappable batteries, weren't tied-in to the personal-data mega-markets, and cost less than £300.
Though they could connect to the Internet, they did not require Internet access to still be very-useful.
Because desktop have always had resizable apps and therefore most apps have coped. (But see fixed size dialogs.)
Whereas there's not much money for most of us in phones. So apps are still fundamentally the same ones that were written a decade ago when it was assumed the screen size at start would be the screen size for life of the app. They will resize to whatever phone you have - but not do so dynamically. (Not least because that proved to be a workaround to limitations of the technology back then.)
And whatever time we have today to do maintenance is being spent on Google or Apple mandated changes. (Looking particularly at Google's billing library 8 right now.)
> my limited use of virtual machines or remote session in Windows, I have never seen any issues when resizing the window.
It is not as bad as it used to be, but YES re-sizing VM windows is a sore-spot for many display systems. One of the first things I check when looking at anew Linux distro. Does it re-size? Shrink/stretch? Or over/under-scan and letterbox or cut-off.
I want a phone ...
Yes.
Just a bloody &%$#" portable phone. *
Light, easy to use, with a strong steady signal anywhere, long lasting battery, etc.
You know what I mean.
I do not want or need to carry a dwarf PC in my pocket.
ie: an expensive, heavy, oversized, intrusive tracking/metadata harvesting device with planned obsolescence and a myriad of functions I do not need or want.
* best phone I ever had, by far, was a Motorola Star-TAC. Save for all the crap it came bundled with, a BlackBerry came next.
.
"Just a bloody &%$#" portable phone."
Why I swallowed my pride and last year purchased a refurbished Apple [yuk] iphone SE (2018?,A1723) which fits nicely into a back pocket or shirt pocket. (4"/100mm screen 113g.) Supports VoLTE (mandatory in AU), makes and receives calls and texts which is all I need. Probably takes photographs too. :)
The downside with such an old iphone is you cannot get a case or any accessories for it. I found an old SE case in a charity shop but was emblazoned with a "Girl Power" decoration but happily no bling. As I had already swallowed my pride, why not? It could have been worse—it could have sported a picture of Trump v1.
"I do not want or need to carry a dwarf PC in my pocket."
Or that abomination the "Phablet" which neither fish nor fowls pleases no one.
But, but, but, ..... any fule kno that the only thing everyone on the entire planet wants from a phone is that it is not only thin, but thinner than the last model. People are already worshipping the god-like thinness of the iPhone Air. Folding phones are impossibly thick when folded so, obviously, no one's going to buy them. I assume that's why no one's developing for them and why none of the major manufacturers has ever brought out a phone with a decent, real-world usage battery life.
"People are already worshipping the god-like thinness of the iPhone Air"
Off topic, but observation suggests 90% of iPhones are routinely stored in back pockets. I wonder what happens when the user sits down with an iPhone Air phone in their arse pocket? Especially in respect of the battery.
just a flexible battery to go with it
Apple has started encasing the batteries in metal the last few years, and confirmed that's the case on iPhone Air as well.
But it is quite strong, there was video of Apple people talking to a couple press people and tossed them an Air and asked him to do his best to bend it. You couldn't really see on the video but he claimed he was able to feel it slightly flex but then it went back to normal when he quit exerting effort on it. The Apple guys said that's exactly what they designed it to do, have a tiny bit of give like a spring rather than attempt to remain completely rigid.
Hede thee these auncient wordes of modern wisdome:
... ;)Better bend than break (Aesop, 6ᵗʰ century BCE)
A [smartphone] that is unbending is easily broken (Tao Te Ching, 4ᵗʰ century BCE)
iBend and do not break (La Fontaine, 1668)
Always drop it on its side (ElReg, 2025) (and don't hold it wrong, or sit on it wrong ...)
"There was a line in the apple presentation about needing the right material for bend resistance"
I'm sure it's crossed their mind, but they've got a device thickness of less than 6mm, and most of the cross section is taken up with the actual phone gubbins. As I recall the physics, materials strength varies with the cube of the depth but proportionately with the width. In the context of a phone, the thickness is the depth of material. At a guess they've changed the alloy of the frame to more "aerospace mix", but that still only gets them so far. I'll accept it will be very well engineered, but if they put 30 million of these in the hands (and arse pockets) of a cross section of the human race somebody will manage to break it - maybe deploying the irresistible force of stupidity.
observation suggests 90% of iPhones are routinely stored in back pockets
For women yes, because women's jeans have tiny front pockets. The back pocket is also too short but so long as 2/3 of the phone fits it is pretty secure (against falling out, not pickpockets)
I never see men keeping their phone in their back pocket, because our pants almost always have front pockets large enough for a phone.
women's jeans have tiny front pockets. The back pocket is also too short but so long as 2/3 of the phone fits it is pretty secure (against falling out, not pickpockets)
Often wondered why the top ⅓ of the phones of the bright young things protruded from their pockets. Fashion statement?
Not being into women's jeans (although opportunity would be a fine thing) I hadn't suspected it was due to the differences in tailoring.
I recall in the late 1990s the Nokia 8110 ("banana phone") was rather nicely shaped to hug the anatomy adjacent a jean's back pocket of your typical nicely shaped young thing. Those were the days—men were men .... and phones were phones.
I don't want thin. I have an Otter case on my iPhone that doubles the thickness. That makes the phone much easier to handle for one thing. Plus I have an easily accessible belt clip for it, so I have pockets for stuff that actually need a pocket. Keys, wallet, ball point pen, little green Xcelite screwdriver, stylus for when I need to 'type' on the screen keyboard, when I dictate messages, etc.
Also a 'thin phone' and 'back pocket' doesn't sound like they go together very well. There is also the issue of the protruding camera that defeats the purpose of 'thin'. A thicker phone has room for a bigger battery. Win-win. Let the camera determine the thickness of the phone. Makes sense to me.
This article sounds more like a promo piece to push sales !!!
(In the UK the adverts are getting more regular, yet with more 'freebies' added on to 'encourage' sales, such as £230 Watches etc !!!)
The basic reason that apps are not supporting this 'large screen' size is that it is yet another 'good idea' that will fade out as the next 'good idea' appears.
It is a lot of effort to adapt to the 'New thing' if it subsequently is superseded by the next 'New Thing' !!!
Also, as stated, these folding phones are not exactly 'cheap' and will mainly appeal to the usual crowd who need to demonstrate their riches by buying the latest/greatest and dearest thing that tells everyone 'I can afford this, so I must be important !!'.
P.S. I also could afford this BUT see no value in a folding phone and the obvious weak point of the fold itself ... Still there BTW !!!
P.P.S. El Reg, standards are slipping, you missed the opportunity for a 'Fold' Sub-heading pun/joke ... I obliged with my Subject Heading :) !!!
:)
So, they aren't for those of us who are getting older, and don't like to squint? I've stopped using my phone except when I need Google Maps Directions. Even then I email myself the addresses so I can cut and paste them from into maps.
The detail that always niggled me is no review ever mentions how it fits in a case. Phones are so thin that they cannot defend themselves and so every 'normal' person naturally buys protection at the same time as their new phone. A folding body must be harder to design a case for but I suspect that these aren't intended to be used by normal people, or used at all. Like the cybertruck it's a showpiece.
Agree with your point about cases generally, but I did think that one of the few plus points of a foldable phone was that the screen was already protected, and the smaller thicker form factor probably didn't need a case? I'd still be reluctant to buy one because I think the foldable screen strikes me as a risk in durability and performance.
But perhaps there's the maker's problem, too many people have doubts. Back in the day of push button mobiles I had a whole string of flip phones - Ericsson T28, Sendo, Motorola V3, so it isn't the principle of a folding phone I have a problem with.
The article says "This year's model is just 8.9 mm thick when folded ... That's just 0.7 mm thicker than Samsung's single-screen flagship, the Galaxy S25 Ultra"
That means the two bodies are comparable to one normal one. Surely they've shaved off important material somewhere? I bet it dents really easily.
Also there's a secondary display on the outside which is just as exposed as a regular phone.
Sounds like a crimp in the plans of our AI overlords if their rank and file troops can't fight back. And a crimp in the phone, of course.
(Mine's the one with a Galaxy S24+ in the pocket ... hopefully not reporting back to AI Overlord HQ.)
While the engineering that has gone into developing a foldable screen especially with any longevity at all is impressive, I'm not sure quite what problem putting it in a phone is going to solve.
Phones get dropped, knocked about and generally mistreated. Putting a giant weak spot in the middle isn't going to endear me to it, especially at the price they want for it. The most I've ever spent on a phone was £400 for a Google Pixel 8a last year, with the hope that it'll survive until it goes EOL software wise.
I can't see how these foldables are going to make it to the end of support in six years time, although perhaps I'm also not the target market here.
My use case is that I do most stuff on a Mac and only use my phone when I'm out and about and then it's mostly for music and contacting people if I'm late or something changes. I use Google maps if desparate and the browser only to solve pub argumernts, mostly about music. If I'm travelling and know I'm going to be doing things like booking travel, hotels and restaurants and will need to use a browser a lot then I'll take an iPad because I simply find it too annoying or difficult to do stuff on a phone. So I guess that, in theory, a decent-sized fold-out screen could be useful for people like me but, in all honesty, I wouldn't be interested.
Foldables are six years into their awkward adolescence and Samsung wants you to believe the Galaxy Z Fold7 is the first phone that isn’t a sad origami exercise. Slimmer, lighter, almost like a real phone - except still a $2,000 experiment where you get to beta-test the hinge.
Developers, we’re told, must now “take foldables seriously.” Yes, please drop everything and redesign your apps so someone can unfold their $2k rectangle into a slightly larger rectangle, just to see Amazon Prime Video letterboxed like it’s 2007. That’s the revolution.
Nobody will remember the hinge age. This is the napkin-fold epoch, a brief insect molt before the true metamorphosis. Already the labs whisper of rollables, stretchables, screens that slither out like tongues of glass, banners of light unfurling from the pocket like a cursed scroll. And here we are, optimising layouts for a crease, sweating over pixels doomed to the landfill.
And then there’s the money. Why on earth should developers pay tribute to Google’s app-store tax just to deliver “experiences” that make foldables desirable? If Samsung and Google actually cared, they’d be paying developers to make exclusive apps - bribes wrapped in grants wrapped in free devices. Instead, Google sits back, skimming 30 percent off everything, while Samsung begs developers to work for free to save their luxury hinge toy from irrelevance.
So yes, you can marvel at your cat’s hairs in QXGA+ glory, or you can remember you could have bought a flagship phone, a tablet, and a laptop for the same price. Foldables are the bridge nobody asked for: too small to be a tablet, too expensive to be a phone, too awkward to be either. Call me when it unfurls like a magician’s scarf.
One useful thing for the crease, however, is that it can help you measure a straight line of Colombian fairy dust.
> you could have bought a flagship phone, a tablet, and a laptop for the same price.
How many pockets do you think I have???? ATM I am carrying a Kindle for reading and a iPhone for my health, and I WON'T put glass in my ass pocket (a friend does, has a massive pile of broken phones), so I am not carrying my Moto unless I go out with a wallet and leave the Kindle home.
As for cases: I don't think a case makes a phone much tougher, but most of my phones will SLIDE out of a pocket even defying gravity. Cases increase friction coefficient and reduce slide-out.
> Foldables are the bridge nobody asked for...
My lover used $39-$79 cash base TracFones for a decade. Suddenlike she's flirting with staff at USCellular for a Galaxy Z Flip3. At the time about $800, so "on plan" they wanted her lovers and dogs to CO-sign the contract. Come to find out her BFF has a Flip and loves it. Nothing like personal endorsement.
I'm sorry, but I didn't spend that much on my last laptop. Foldable phones are a stupid show-off gimmick as long they're at this price point. There's just no way to justify buying a folding phone no matter what the software when it costs as much as that because it can't replace your laptop. It can't. It doesn't matter how powerful the processor is or how much ram it has, or how high resolution the screen is because you can't type on it and the screen is too physically small for it to work as a 2-foot device once put down on a table. The form factor is a compromise and it has to be. Folding phones maybe make that compromise a bit lesser in some very specific circumstances but not very many. Sure, nice to have, but unless the cost comes down by at least a whole zero off the end of the current pricing it's just a way of showing off that you can afford it.
Yeah, plus the unfolded screen on this Galaxy Z Fold7 just has the hugest-ass plastic bezels I've seen since the 1970s ... where's the big bonus in unfolding when the resulting screen is still just half of the available area?
(or maybe it's the software they're running on it that makes it appear this way ... making TFA's point quite nicely ... ?)
"it's just a way of showing off that you can afford it"
I'm less sure. In the UK seems most phones are sold on monthly payment plans by the telcos, so people aren't thinking "that's two grand!", they're thinking "that's 60 up front and then 46 a month". Say four hours minimum wage earnings per month. Admittedly that 46 a month is for three years, I doubt that people besotted by the latest shiney worry about those details.
Interestingly, this means that although MNOs earnestly believe they're cutting edge communications and tech companies, in reality their real business is mostly unsecured tied lending to the borderline creditworthy. Not really that different to domestic energy suppliers. In both cases there's a lot of back office complexities to the service that the customers don't know about, but the difference between success and failure is often no more or less than how well the company controls its bad debt exposure, having lent money to all and sundry.
I've had a Motorola Razr 40 since launch and it's been great over those 2 years. The battery life is good, the external screen is very useful & robust, the fold out screen remains unmarked & fully functional although you can see the foldline if you look for it. I expect my phones to last 3-4 years, and fully expect this to last that long considering it's current condition after 2 years.
It fits in whatever pocket I choose to place it in which has helped to protected it somewhat, and the supplied hard-case has kept the phone looking good. The screen folds out to a pretty standard Android screen shape & size, so all apps work as expected.
It seems that Motorola are selling last years model Razr 50 for £400 meaning that it's roughly the same price as any other mediocre standard Android phone - making the foldable phone affordable for most purchasers and a tempting upgrade.
There's a lot of nonsense written about foldable phones primarily by those who don't actually use them - it feels like there have been enough generations of development now meaning that current models are pretty mature and have had most of the weaknesses and gremlins designed out.
I cannot express quite how much I do not want, nor need, a folding mobile phone.
The same way that I don't even want a second monitor (or third... or fourth...) on my computers.
What I want is for you to make apps that work, on an OS that works, without worrying about nonsense like "camera notches" and folding screens and curved edges and .... all the other nonsense invented for no other reason than the "feel novel".
I would, however, PAY MONEY to be able to just turn off any AI junk, and account-based stuff, and uninstall ALL applications, even the so-called mandatory ones that I instead lob into a folder called "Junk" and never touch ever again.
Dropping £2k on a phone is a level of insanity I will never come to terms with. Ever.
My phone is in my left back pocket and my wallet is in my right back pocket.
When the left is worth more than the folding in the right I will have certainly lost the plot.
(I hasten to add that I am not worth mugging for either.)
Quite.
I had to seriously sit and consider a £400 phone as a treat some years ago, but it was one of the best purchases I've ever made (Samsung XCover Pro... still have removable batteries, headphone sockets, dual-SIM, microSD slot, etc.).
I see kids with phones that cost twice as much and they don't do anything on them. And when they inevitably break them, they just buy another stupidly expensive on, on contract.
(P.S. I've never broken a phone. The only phone I ever "broke" was my XCover... I was sure that water had got into it - it's supposed to be waterproof - and the screen had a permanent water puddle inside it that didn't move. I tried drying it out, but it wouldn't go away and it was a mild annoyance at best because the screen still worked fine. I just assumed the water had got into the screen and damaged it. Turned out it wasn't broken at all. When the phone was taken to a warm climate for a day, the puddle disappeared. I've always used it in a steamy bathroom or while walking in intense rain with no problems at all, don't know what was different about that one time.)
Because I want my regular non-fold phone to have that screen that BENDS instead of breaking.
And stop giving the manufacturers any reason to buy new phones every year is always a good reason.
Fighting planned obsolescence and supporting right to repair are not that important if the thing has no reason to collapse into its constituent parts as soon as it hits the floor. Even a swollen battery wouldn't make it fail, (altough you want to fix that asap.)
TLDR
I want a screen that doesn't break, but bends, even when the phone doesn't. I will drink to that.
I've had a Z Fold 6 for a while now. Thanks to various discounts I didn't pay full price for it.
I rarely use the folded screen. Way less than I imagined I would. I am actually missing a decent phone with one screen that is a reasonable size. Hence my next phone will be a Galaxy Ultra. The folded screen is just too much hassle believe it or not. It's not something I casually use as a result. It also attracts dust inside and so you have to continually wipe that off if you do use it.
As for cases, I spent 40 quid on one. It hasn't reached a year and it is also snapped in the corner and I've binned it. Made the whole phone look and feel huge. Waste of time and money and now I'm worryingly carrying and using my naked phone.
Foldables are in my experience just a way of saying I've got something different. I wanted it to be useful but I'm over it now. Just stuck with it for a while longer.
I get the feeling this folding nonsense will get the love of the red headed stepchild, as stated in many comments already, it's a lot of work for no return. I get the feeling some manager asked an engineer a simple question, and the engineer said, well sure it's possible. And now we have it!
Might as well call them the Persephone phone.
The annoying thing is there used to be pretty good tablet support all the way back on Android Kitkat (4.4 if I remember?) with the built-in AOSP apps having tablet layouts where applicable. Then Google decided it wasn't supporting tablets any more and not only that, removed the tablet UIs which already existed when users updated to later versions of Android.
This latest push with Android 12L onwards isn't getting too much traction with developers because developers are well aware of big G's wandering attention span and indifference.
There's nothing worse than having to buy a bag to fit your phone. Stop making them so long. Bring back phones like the Nokia 3310, the tiny Motorola Flip, and the first iphone from the noughties, all of which fitted snugly in any clutch bag and zip pocket of a small bag. In the evening us ladies want to carry keys, card, small cash, lipstick and phone. not an effing shoulder bag, We're not the 80s where you dance round them LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But the flip format, that's interesting. I'm just too particular when it comes to practical features on my devices, so I haven't seen one yet that does it for me.
1) dual physical sim
2) AND microsd
3) headphone jack
4) big plus is quickly removable battery.
It's why I have an xcover 5
... and telling us why it all went wrong.
In ten years?
I can tell you right now:
It is a dumb as fuck idea or, as some marketing DHs like to say, an idiot-magnet *.
* related to all that has been said/written about fools, their money and how easily they part ways.
.
If you browse through now not updated gsma web site's photo tool, with Samsung galaxy s24ultra amd the likes being among the last flagships, you will find out that mate x2 foldable from huawei got the most detail in its hi res mode, bo other phone, be it fold or bar phone was able to achieve.
It was great for a reason - almost full thickness for camera sensors - foldable was camera centric bit also with great attention to image processing.
1.No fold without going cameras first will kill bar phones.
2. From design perspective is rollable better as it leaves full, I mean really full thickness for camera sensors - as a bonus, no crease.
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