Android

It's a gimmick that makes phones less reliable and doesn't add value to the experience.

The phrase "what's stopping you" implies we're all interested, but hesitant.

This is a really, really bad assumption.

Uhh the price tag? I just bought a new phone after 6 years of honoured service from my old one, payed the new one a whopping 300€ and it already felt like a rip off. Ain't no way I'm paying four digits for a phone.

My current phone still works.

Price

The price, the line down the middle, the hinge. Generally just not requiring any more screen space

-Not durable (If you can damage the screen with your fingernail it's not durable enough. Period.) -No headphone jack

• No expandable storage
• No removae battery
• Lack of support for folding screens in apps
• Extremely high prices

I don't pay more than £400 for a phone. So that.

Cost durability Size difficult to repair (if not impossible) lack of sdcard (on such a large body) No open source ROMS

Cost and durability

1. My current phone works fine
2. I can't run CalyxOS or GrapheneOS on it
3. They are way too expensive

Price and durability. I don't know, I can maybe get one eventually if I really want to, but shelling out like ~$1500 USD for a unproven screen design is pretty yikes to me. Plus, since my LG V60 is still serving me so well I really see no good reason to replace it.

1. I'll break it

2. I dont need what a foldable offers

I've avoided the like the plague for all the obvious reasons, my mum has been using one for a few years now and ran into just about all of those reasons.

Permanant mid fold in screen.

Durability lasts far fewer actions than what was in the specs and warranty.

Refurbishing only introduced new issues and failed to resolve old issues.

Too expensive.

My current phone still works, too expensive, durability concerns (my current phone would not be working were it a foldable), center crease, looks like a pain to repair (right to repair hell yeah!), and most importantly...

...why? What do I gain by going with a foldable? My current phone doesn't need to fold to fit in my pocket, and it doesn't have so many compromises.

The main thing stopping me is that I don’t use Android phones right now. But even if I did, I personally find the whole foldable phone thing to be a bit gimmicky. I’d want to see it have staying power over some years before I’d even consider getting one.

I'm not paying a thousand plus dollars for a phone. I go through a phone every year and a half to two years. I don't want to spend $1,000 a year for a phone.

I don't want to have a never-ending phone payment. I buy inexpensive but good quality phones like Motorola's or second-hand pixels and I'm good.

I spend 160 something dollars a year on average on phones, and use the least expensive prepaid plans out there.

And this is not because I am poor, there's room in the budget for me to have the fancy iPhone and you know the top of the line plan or whatever, I just got better things to spend my money on and than a fucking phone.

If a company comes out with a folding phone that doesn't have a lot of bloatware on it and is in the $200 range then the next time I buy a new phone I would consider it.

Honestly, I just don't find them very appealing, one of my coworkers has one and having the thing unfold into a shape more like a small tablet just looks like it'd make it harder to use one handed, and having a weird seam in the middle looks distracting. They look kinda cool and novel because I'm not used to seeing screens fold like that, but I don't see myself actually preferring one once the novelty ran out.

I don't want one. It's a cool technological feat, but like a transparent monitor or flexible keyboard, it just doesn't make sense for my needs.

It adds nothing of value. It's just a neat gimmick. I don't want a crease in my screen, I don't want to double the width of my phone in my pocket, and I have no valid use cases for it.

Nobody's mentioned it, but the main thing for me is that the screen aspect ratio isn't any good.

I've always preferred bigger screens and bigger phones and willing to pay a bit extra for a foldable screen now they've been on the market for a while. I doubt they'll last as long as a normal phone screen, but they generally review well and I get they impression they are more durable than most people expect.

But.. the main benefit of a big screen (for me) is for watching videos. If it's not 16:9 (or close to it) then what's the point? I don't need to multitask on my phone, I'll switch to a laptop for that - I've had phones that do split screen for years and it was a cool gimmick for a while, but I've never really made good use of it.

If anyone can tell me of a phone with a big screen and 16:9 aspect ratio then I'd be willing to reconsider...

I see them as every way inferior to normal phones. I don't get why they're popular.

I simply don't like them. There's zero use case where I would consider a foldable phone superior, or even equivalent to a regular one.

Im not gonna buy a phone that's worth several months of salary in my country only to get mugged the moment I pull it out

They're way too expensive. Moving parts such as the folding screen are just a focal point for stress, which is unacceptable given how expensive they are. I hate hearing that people can get dust in the hinge without anyway to clean it out.

You're also paying for extra screens such as the one on the outside and the folding inner screen. This is just added unnecessary cost when you'll never use both at the same time. I'm guessing the outer screens were added to reduce the number of times people unfold the phone over its lifetime, which gets back to my other point that adding moving parts just adds more issues than it solves.

Overall, I see it as a novelty at best. From the prices I've seen them sold at for the phones that turn into a tablet like device when unfolded, you can just buy a phone and a tablet separately for less. I think their purpose is to create a product more expensive than what the current flagship phones run, giving rich people something to spend additional money on to to show they have a lot of money and enough novelty for tech reviewers to discuss during reviews.

I took the dive, got one and it's awesome. I browse Lemmy 95% of the time on my outer screen. I went with Motorola Razor+ because I'm not the biggest Samsung fan and I totally impulse bought it. Unless it's something that demands I open my phone, I don't really, and that was what got me to get it. Without the outside screen I probably wouldn't have gotten it, but totally glad I did.

Aside from price, the fact that they are twice as thicker as a regular phone make them pointless for me. When we have the technology to make them 8-12mm thickness I might be interested.

My clothes have pockets

IMO, I think it's a pretty dumb concept in the way we're currently implementing it. If I want a borderline TV to carry around, I'll buy a tablet. I just want a phone for quick access to my communications mainly; I don't have vision issues that requires the screen to even be as big as some of the "small" offerings from the larger players in the cellular market. Additionally, to satisfy the quick access, many have multiple screens now, which I think is equally dumb, you're never going to use both screens at the same time, and most of the time there's no use-case where both screens would be on. The only viable folding device IMO, is the zFlip, and my pockets aren't small enough for me to care, or justify the extra cost, and durability concerns.

I recognize it's an important step in the process to make phones like this to further the foldable screens, so they can be further developed to be more durable, more flexible, and overall better than they currently are, but I, personally, have no need for one, nor desire to own one. The crease isn't pretty either, but it's not my chief concern.... it's just way too much for way too little. I haven't appreciated the direction of phones for a while, or the emphasis on the camera; simply, I want something better, faster, easier to use, and that lasts longer. Not a phablet with less than 18 hours of battery life, and a last-gen mobile radio in it.... Samsung did that kind of thing with the Galaxy Note, and I find the folding phones to be an extension of that.

I love technology, I wok in technology and I appreciate it, but I have no desire for this. Give me a 5" screen, with powerful hardware under the hood and a good, latest-gen LTE/5G/whatever radio and WiFi 6e/7/whatever, and a decent battery, and I'm happy. Lately phones are too big for my large hands, and have cut so many corners that anything affordable is slow as all heck. I don't want to pay multiple thousands of dollars for something that works for me, simply because it has a bunch of fancy camera features I'm never going to care about. Having a camera is good, but 90% of the time I'm taking pictures of racks of equipment, wires, and my cat. I don't need a 50 megapixel camera with both wide angle and telephoto supplemental cameras and AI enhancements/image processing to capture images of my feline, or my network switch. What I do need is something that I can flip between half a dozen different apps to do my job, with a fast network connection so I can move data around quickly, and a battery that doesn't need charging multiple times a day so that my phone will stay powered on while I work...

It's way too expensive for what I want.

I actually just want a very small but very functional smartphone since I currently don't have a phone at all.

I just use my Tab S7+5G as a phone, been doing that since the S6. I've just recently ran into some issues where I might need a smaller device, e.g. to use some store app QR codes or similar stuff where you'd have to present your phone. Well... I can actually do that just fine, but pulling out a 12inch tablet makes you look like a dork.

To be honest, I'd wish someone made a non-folding phone with a the height of a folded folding phone lmao

Simple: price. I think that is true for the majority of users. When there's a $200 foldable out there, people will try it just to see what the fuss is about. But that's not even on the horizon.

For me personally, they need to come wayyyy down. Like 1/3 of the current price. That would put them in competition with budget flagships like the Pixel 7.

I really just cant stand the weird plastic-looking screens they all have on the inside.

Also yeah being anywhere from double to triple the price for something that I think looks objectively worse than a regular glass phone screen is just... not gonna happen.

I want my phone to last more than 2 years

The fact the most of them are made by Samsung and I can’t stand the amount of bloatware Samsung put on their devices.

It all comes down to the gimmick not being worth an additional thousand euros to the price of my phone.

I don't think durability would be a problem for me as I already baby my glass back device and I haven't been using screen protectors for years with no problem. The downgrade in cameras isn't that big of a deal for me as most pictures I take are macro, and as it turns out phones nowadays are horrendous dogshit at it anyway.

I think I'd enjoy the gimmick, I used to own a flip phone as a teenager, it's just not worth a thousand euros extra. I'd probably add another 150 or 200 euros to my pixel to buy a folding phone.

The crease is still far too noticable for me. That and the outrageous price that some of these things close when they eventually make it to the shelves with the "Australia tax" applied to it.

Price and durability. I'm not going to pay exorbitant prices for something I'll have to replace in 2 years

What is the benefit? What improvement does it offer? What is the point of introducing a weakness and simultaneous single point failure in exchange for a phone with a smaller, less durable screen, has a fatter form factor, and makes it more difficult to use to do all the things I actually use my phone for?

Flip phones existed as a way to easily answer and end calls. They went away when touch screens became a more convenient and versatile means of using a device. Nobody talks on the phone anymore. I don't even have my phone app on my home screen.

Money

I'm still not sold on the durability and the last thing I want is the screen to become a wear item. Even with most of them pretty much all switching from plastic to ultra thin glass, bending glass like that is asking for it to eventually break and replacement internal screens aren't cheap.

Secondly, a lot of foldables sacrifice battery capacity as the Flip 5 has a 3700 MAh battery and the Fold 5 has a 4400 MAh and powering a 2nd, larger screen is going to consume more battery. A normal smartphone you can typically find with at least 5000 MAh batteries in them.

The tech is cool and all, but it just seems more like an engineering flex rather than something that's practical.

I don't see myself folding a foldable. Why would I want that?