No way I’m switching to foldable phones just yet
POLL: Galaxy Z Flip vs. Motorola Razr: Spec comparison
I don’t think Apple will jump the wagon yet to make a foldable phone… but who knows what they are thinking? 
As @professor pointed out, the phone makers going the wrong direction right now 
I wish they do research on other types of tech instead of this type of non-useful designs
Looking at the Poll results so far, 7 out of 7 that voted didn’t like to go to any foldable phone yet.
Wonder what kind of data Samsung or Motorola had to go this route to spend time and money to re-invent a foldable phone? 
Or it’s just us the odd group of people that didn’t want to change with technology
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If we build it they will come.
I guess there’s always gonna be a hard core of early adopters.
And as the Z Flip isn’t crazy money i think we will see a few about.
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I reckon they will sell to geeks and those who want to impress. It’s very difficult to lose money making such things as you simply charge a really high price and use the egos of those who want to be seen with a known expensive item. Suppose you wanted to make $1M profit, you can charge $1 extra on a million units or $1000 extra on a thousand units. Any item has a market regardless of price.
It’s if you make the mistake of charging a high price for something unreliable as those egos won’t like showing it off to then have it fail. And that is I think going to be the problem initially due to the mechanical nature and they not been real world debugged. It’s one thing to have a robot in a controlled clean factory fold many times, totally different to be in a pocket with fluff and imperfect users.
I do however see ultimately these will happen in volume as the technology improves, version 3 will be when I’ll probably get one, when mass produced and lower cost, in the meantime I’ll smile with fake envy to those who are funding the debugging versions 1 and 2.
The physics fights a folding device:
- a battery needs a minimum thickness of protecting cover
- surface area is to power of square
- volume, so energy capacity, is to power of cube
- therefore smaller batteries are smaller energy per unit of volume
- a hinge means you can’t put one big battery in, you either have one small or two small, so necessarily your battery capacity is smaller for a given volume of unfolded vs non-folding of same size.
- however the large screen causes GPU and light to make, causing big battery needs
- so these folding devices have to either have bad battery life, or be thicker to compensate, for example the Moto folding phone has only 2510mAh battery for a 6.2" screen, vs, say, OnePlus 7T 6.55" screen and 3800mAh battery, 51% larger
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Agree, I’m always after real world proof of concept and reliability.
As you say, the whole device gets much more abuse sitting in your pocket when bending and lifting and being opened by a human who isn’t likely to open and close in the uniformed way a machine would do.
Time will tell but I’m excited about the future of foldable phone.
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Well real world reliability is beginning to come in and were looking at a folding phone not lasting a year, the owner will struggle with warranty replacement as the seller will say the user abused the unit. Geeks probably expect unreliability as they know that comes with new technology, but the egos who did it to impress will be the angry ones.
Also as MKBD states there isn’t that much to be gained in these smaller units as unfolded it gives you the same screen as a phone you probably can fit in pocket already anyway.
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So you’re looking at $500-1000 extra to have a hinge
In comparison, say the Huawei M6 8.4 with 6GB RAM, 128GB storage + SD slot, vs the Galaxy Fold, if you remove the hinge you save about $1571.
How often do you want a tablet and you have no bag / coat to hold the tablet?
I am liking the 8.4 inch table more than before as i read your theory @professor you seriously got a point there and I have to admit 
If I were to replay all my decisions again I’d separate network from device and go with a MiFi+SD and WiFi devices, in the long term that would have lowered total cost.
I’m still learning.
But with what I own, I just periodically move my unlimited data SIM between devices to suit the trip, which this time of year is usually 8.4" tablet, but come summer heat can be just a LTE smartwatch.
I like the idea too… Only issue is carrying the MiFi with you, and it’s battery life. May be we can charge it with a slim powercore.
The reviews are not positive here
I have the Verizon Jetpack MiFi 6620L… this is pretty good on charge, been using it for last 3 years and still going good.
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Thanks, a make up mirror will be all I see now when I see a Z-Flip 
So this next view is carrier-specific, country-specific so this is not a universal truth, but in my experience is common and likely true for many, accepting not for all.
The cost of data per line goes down by how much data you buy in phone lines. To illustrate, here in UK is a network, but does not represent a recommendation/endorsement.
So if you plot it by cost-per-GB and normalise, so it becomes a relative, not absolute:
As a chart
So the unit cost of data lowers if you aggregate your data needs, adding a line is lower cost if its a low data line.
So having multiple devices sharing data is lower total cost. That seems true both wired and wireless.
So having each phone/tablet on a low-data line, and they share a MiFi is the lowest total overall cost.
Nice use of charts to show the cost of data 
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I don’t advocate those on a budget to get these 1st or 2nd generation folding phones because you’re paying a premium for something probably which will not be reliable and will probably the next couple of generations will be substantially better. For example, the screen will be damaged quickly.
But I can see ultimately these folding ideas will become popular because it either makes today’s 6" phones smaller in pocket (e.g. ladies would prefer for smaller handbags), or allows a tablet to fit in smaller place.
This review gives hints as to the feedback real world usage will cause, the larger external display on the Razr will get to the next Flip.
I can see them the external display being simply an extension of the internal display and a Z shaped folded phone with two hinges.
That will probably be gated by the new Graphene or solid state batteries required to increase energy density to compensate for the space lost due to the hinge.
When you open the make up mirror, you will see your selfie too.Lol
Awesome comparison… plus the quality will be great all the time, no need to edit / modify the selfie pic