Foldable Phones: Hype Vs Reality – Foldable phones can’t catch a break, mainly because they keep breaking / Will they ever be durable and affordable for most people?
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Foldable Phones: Hype Vs Reality
Soon, I swear to you, we’ll stop talking about folding phones in this place. We’re almost done, as I’ll be working with our video team today for a review of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip – expect it later this week. A quick thanks to everyone who sent in questions and if you have any, let me know and I’ll try to address them in the review.
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There is a cliché that three examples make a pattern and now that three folding phones have been sold here in the US, a pattern has emerged. The Galaxy Fold, Motorola Razr, and Galaxy Z Flip each had their own launch dramas, broken screens, availability issues, and prices too hard to judge.
At this point recapping the Galaxy Fold and Motorola Razr seems like overkill, but it’s worth noting that at least one Razer developed a very peculiar screen split issue. Put that next to the well-trodden issues with the Z Flip’s screen over the weekend and drama round the fold and we’re three-for-three on folding phones with durability issues.
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As for the Z Flip, it’s at least one cracked screen from the cold and what you might call a failure in the durability stress test. JerryRigEverything produced a video showing how easily the plastic coating on the glass screen picks up smudges and scratches.
How “ultra thin glass” is so thin that when punctured at a fine point it hardly works as well.
Let me tell you that our reporting on Samsung’s response led to a full day of confused anger in my Twitter replies about whether or not Samsung was telling the truth about the Z Flip being made of glass. For the record: it’s glass covered with a plastic coating, which has some advantages over purely plastic screens on other folding phones but not as much as you might expect. JerryRigEverything’s video is proof of that.
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Meanwhile, iFixit has posted a full teardown by the time you read this story and even put up a video of its own. The Jade Flip completely failed to stand up to what I think was some pretty harsh abuse: being shaken into a bag of very fine and gritty powder. It wasn’t reflective of how I think anyone would treat these phones, but still not entirely unfair.
The Z Flip has some extra protections against dust ingress and it has that glass substrate. Compared to both the Galaxy Fold and the Motorola Razr, the Z Flip is a significant upgrade in build quality. Fundamentally, though, these phones are more fragile than any smartphone we’ve seen in a while – maybe.
Samsung’s improvements deserve credit, but it’s surprising to me that the company didn’t seem to have the seemingly entirely predictable problems with the Z Flip. Of course people were going to beat the hell out of it and of course it would lead to reasonable concerns about durability. Samsung’s decision to only offer 24-hour credit to reviewers like me only adds to the feeling of distrust (I’m reviewing a phone I was finally able to buy after trying all weekend, not a lender).
Note that Samsung’s response to the screen durability issue is that there is a $119 one-time screen replacement and that buyers can go to a U Break I Fix store to install some kind of screen protector for free—apparently this requires a professional. But it shouldn’t have been a reaction, it should have been communicated from the jump.
Foldable Phones: A Brief History Of Their Beginning
Another response is a press release touting the properties of this new glass and suggesting that it is in high demand. There’s even a tagline, “Tough, yet tender.” Because what you want out of the glass is to think of it like the title of a romance novel.
All three phones had three major launch issues: price, durability, and early availability. Put it all together and I’m confused as to why Samsung and Motorola treated these phones like regular consumer devices instead of clearly intended uses.
A better strategy is to label them as “limited editions”. Treat them like something between sneaker drops and Google Glass. A little hype but a lot of expectation setting about how they aren’t ready for the real world yet – plus you could make a big deal about how little production was being done.
Because all three of these phones share a fourth commonality: the vast, vast majority of people shouldn’t buy one.
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┏ Coronavirus cancellations show that evidence-based decisions are rare during a pandemic. I look forward to Nicole Weitzman’s analysis. “Being cautious and overreacting at the same time” is the best way to describe it.
If the Mobile World Congress had gone ahead as planned, Abramson says it would not have posed an increased risk to the health of attendees, if precautions had been taken — it was scheduled to take place in Spain, which does not have active transmission. Virus. “They were alert and probably overreacting at the same time,” says Abramson.
All of the following stories from the past day or two are technically unrelated but, as TC Sotek noted on Twitter, seem related on some deep, metaphysical level. This isn’t a complete opinion so don’t hold me to it, but there’s an argument that Bill Gates was the best tech CEO for the 1990s and Elon Musk is the tech CEO we deserve (for better or worse). In 2020.
┏ Nintendo announces first new Switch Lite color since launch. Coral, the new color, is the second best switch light color after yellow, which is the best switch light color.
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┏ Ring enables mandatory two-factor authentication and new privacy controls in response to scams. This should be Amazon’s (Ring’s parent company) first response.
┏ Google delights Stadia subscribers with first new game announcements after launch. But at least Google is starting to give more details about upcoming games. It’s easy enough to turn the subscription back on if and when I want it. Google also announced a ton of new compatible phones — though most are Samsung Galaxy phones.
┏ Canceling your Stadia Pro subscription is easy and you won’t lose your paid games. I did it. When there are more games I may consider subscribing again – but for now I mainly use it in contexts where high resolution is either not important or not possible due to bandwidth issues.
Also, here’s your regular reminder to think of subscriptions in terms of annual costs instead of monthly, which means you should think of Stadia Pro as costing $120 per year. If this is your primary gaming platform, it seems worth it. If it’s not, the free tier works just fine. As with streaming video services, you can subscribe and unsubscribe as often as you like.
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┏ Civilized Bicycles is an electric bike full of surprises. Andrew Hawkins is having a lot more fun testing weird and varied e-bikes than I am testing weird and varied smartphones:
One of the things that excites me most about e-bikes is the use of form factors: mini-bikes that look like motorcycles, cargo bikes that look like small trucks, fat tire bikes with a ton of power and maybe an automotive badge.
┏ Apple may use its own 5G antenna in its 2020 iPhones. This will be a real test for Apple, I think. If it can significantly outpace Qualcomm in this part, I expect Apple to be more aggressive in its timeline for releasing other parts. There are easy jokes to make about antennagate here, but I’ll ignore them. The stakes are very high.
A new report from Fast Company indicates that Apple is looking to limit its reliance on Qualcomm, with the iPhone maker looking to design its own 5G antennas instead of relying on Qualcomm’s existing hardware. … The issue at hand is apparently the size of Qualcomm’s QTM525 antenna, specifically for accessing the faster mmWave version of 5G, which a fast company source claims is too big for the slim profile of Apple’s next iPhone.
Foldable Phones — The Samsung Galaxy Fold Review
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