Let’s Discuss: Foldable Phones.
A recent couple of years have been supercharged with brand new innovations pertaining to the mobile phone industry. And while some of these innovations, such as the removal of headphone jacks, incorporation of edge to edge displays, and the various forms of implementations of front cameras had a massive upheaval, a few others — including curved displays, T-shaped screens, and having a screen on both sides of the handset — had a mixed, if not a disapproving response from the consumers. But one change that stands above all the others is the introduction of folding phones.
You might have come across one of these if you touch upon even the aura of technology. First introduced into the market by a Chinese company ‘Royole,’ foldable phones have inspired multiple tech-giants such as Samsung and Microsoft into making their own variants. The aim of folding the form-factor of the current design is to incorporate a larger display without creating the need for over-sized pockets. And without a doubt, the companies have managed to do it successfully, which can be seen as about 50 million units are expected for shipment by 2022. But there is one aspect of these phones that keeps an even larger audience at a distance: the price. Costing about two times the price of phones that didn’t attend yoga classes, folding phones don’t make the cut for being ‘worthy’ according to most buyers. But this pricing is reasonable to an extent. Handling a fairly new concept and intending to attract more customers, companies experiment to create a phone which serves the purpose and is durable. These experiments factor into the high pricing. Samsung dominates the current market for such phones with their Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2, the second iteration — and a massive improvement over the first one — of their fold series. On the other hand, Royole, Motorola, Samsung with its Galaxy Z Flip, and even Microsoft are not doing nearly as well with their folding flagships. Multiple reasons account for this. Starting with the Royole FlexPai, the overall poor build quality and the lack of appreciation for Chinese phones diminished the hype. Although Motorola with its Razr 5G and Samsung with the aforementioned device had just about the right implementation of everything, there wasn’t any visible practicality of folding a regular-sized phone that fits perfectly everywhere. But these reasons aren’t all that’s wrong. Microsoft with its Surface Duo was able to expand the boundaries of how wrong a manufacturer can go with their folding phone. Not only did it lack in terms of hardware, with a bezel going through the middle of the screens that are supposed to work in collaboration, and having a below-par camera setup, it even lacked in terms of the software, which was poorly integrated. But all these mishaps are forgivable for the time being, considering how new this design is. A design which some relate to the old times, where flip phones were voguish.
Predicting what the future holds for this alteration in the industry is difficult. But this future looks exciting, as more brands like Apple, Huawei, and OnePlus might become part of this innovative revolution. Maybe an even more exhilarating concept, for example, a modular phone, would be considered. For now, we can only admire the changing technological world.
