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
I regularly go weeks without touching my personal laptop. I do nearly everything on my phone and it's generally as easy if not easier than on a laptop (for example, I personally find cleaning up my email to be easier to do on my phone then my laptop). I have my todoist on my phone, I track workouts on my phone, my music and podcasts are all on my phone, I bank and pay bills on my phone, I shop on my phone, I navigate in my car using my phone, I read news and post on lemmy from my phone, on and on. Not to mention my phone is the only picture taking device I have and I want to be able to have good quality pictures to look back on over the years. My phone is the device that runs my life life, so when it comes time for a new one I have no problem sending a little more for good quality.
Right? I sometimes sit at my desk at work and work on my phone, even though my computer is right in front of me. There's some stuff that's harder, but just reading and responding to email is sometimes easier on my phone.
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.
Eh, I'll buy that but it still seems like an awful lot to go wrong and break.
Yes, theoretically it's less durable compared to a regular smartphone, but practically, you'd probably replace the device well before it comes to it's breaking point.
Samsung rates the Fold 4 to 200k folds (and 400k for the Flip 5). I've been using my Fold 4 for coming up to an year now, and I've observed that I don't open/close more than 20 times a day. That comes to a total life of 27 years. Even if I say open/close 40 times a day, and say, Samsung lied and the real life is 100k folds, that still works out to 6.8 years, which is well past the time I'd normally hold on to a smartphone. So rest assured, folding the thing isn't really an issue.
Here's JerryRigEverything's durability test video btw of the Fold 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RteJVUwzhWs
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=RteJVUwzhWs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
you'd probably replace the device well before it comes to it's breaking point.
You underestimate my cheapness.
They're cool. I absolutely would get one. But not for nearly twice the price. It's just far too much of a premium.
The flip 4 is somewhat cheap now compared to its release price
A friend of mine spottet it for 30ish% down from its price at release
May I ask why, is it just price?
Yep, I cannot justify the price. If it were available on lower end devices I wouldn't do it even then because the build quality would be shit.
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).
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.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The hinge seemed to get unusable after it was doused with eggs and flour? I wonder why...
Given Samsung’s flip phone has an IP rating of IPX8, which means it’s protected against being submerged in water but isn’t protected against dust (for now), it seems likely the flour played a part in the phone breaking. But being able to survive 400,000 folds would still mean the phone should survive over 10 years of use if you unfold and fold it around 100 times a day.
Honestly I'm impressed it survived for as long as it did. I played around with a demo model last month, and I figured it'd break rather quickly even with normal use. But I guess the conclusion is as long as you take care of it, it'll be fine. Still think it's all a gimmick though.
I bought the z fold for the gimmick. I love the gimmick. Its the Pokémon pagents of phones and I'm here for it.
If the hinge is the same design as the flip4 it won't take much to break it. I went through 2 of them with a fully hinge protected case and both times the hinge would get misaligned from a small fall onto carpet.
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?