The Foldable Smartphone: The Waiting (and Waiting) Revolution

In July 2023, Wired Magazine expressed a sentiment that seemed easy to agree with – “the world isn’t sold on foldable smartphones”. However, the article came with a caveat – “yet”. The foldable revolution might harken back to the Wild West of phone experimentation, back in the 2000s, when a circular device (e.g. the Siemens Xelibri 6) was just as likely to hit the shelves as a rectangular one, but something about foldable devices seems to want to stick around.

Are we really on the cusp of the first shift in handset design since the release of the first iPhone?

The Dominant Rectangle

The advantages of a foldable smartphone may not be clear. Samsung stresses that its Galaxy Z Fold4 is engineered towards multitasking, allowing owners to use each half of the device for a different task via Flex Mode. This might mean watching a video and scrolling Facebook. It could provide new avenues for game developers.

Even an adjacent technology like online slot games can benefit from multiple displays. The IGT-developed game Cash Eruption Hephaestus doesn’t require much real estate. Still, gameplay information such as jackpots is displayed separately from the reels – in this case, above the action. Adding jackpots to a second screen would make this information more visible (and useful) to the player.

Samsung seems to hint at this stripped-down functionality of some products in its Fold4 marketing. For instance, Google apps allow dragging and dropping on foldable devices, while, overall, software like Microsoft Office gets more screen space to play with. Smartphones have never been an ideal tool for work or productivity, a problem that arguably gave rise to the tablet or ‘phablet’.

While it’s unlikely that a foldable handset makes either of these devices obsolete, it at least offers a(nother) middle-ground between tech already on the market. There’s a distinction between foldable phones and dual-screen phones, though, something we’ll come to shortly.

Fans of foldable devices might point to their form-factor as a benefit over the more traditional rectangle. Courtesy of the fact they can be folded in half, much like the older clamshell-style handset, foldable smartphones can be up to half the size of a standard iPhone and weigh a little less. Now for the bad news. Why hasn’t the ‘superior design’ of foldable devices threatened the dominant rectangle?

Revolution

Wired claims that the former has been available for around five years, yet foldable phones account for just 2% of the smartphone market. As mentioned, for older users, the lawlessness of the 2000s tech industry has handed foldable handsets an unwanted label, that of a novelty.

Granted, folding clamshells were popular back then, but manufacturers ceased experimenting years ago, meaning that the Galaxy Z Fold4 has to blaze its trail. The Nokia N-Gage might have been strange-looking in 2004, but there was also a precedent for mutant creations that no longer exists.

Revolutions, by definition, generally don’t take very long to take hold, which might seem worrisome for anybody invested in foldable devices. However, one issue in particular has kept the rebellion paused – price. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold4 launched at $1,700 (£1,351). Even the cheaper Flip4 retailed at $999 ($793).

The two handsets are now available at a much more agreeable £503 and £285, respectively, on Amazon, but this only applies to the ‘renewed' (refurbished) model. Prices for new phones trend a few hundred pounds more – although, it's not the most available product on the market. Research company IDC only expects foldable handsets to make up 3.5% of the smartphone market in the next few years. That’s a lot of money for manufacturers, but it doesn’t throw much support behind our revolution.

A Tech Demo

Foldable devices have a natural competitor in dual-screen phones. What’s the difference? Foldable smartphones have one, continuous display that can be folded to produce a second. Dual-screen handsets are exactly that – they have two, separate displays. Android Central notes that the dual-screen option might win out over its foldable cousin because it’s less expensive to produce and less fragile.

Foldable displays have a single moving part – the hinge, which will inevitably wear out during regular use. It’s just a question of how long it can survive being flipped and snapped.

Overall, it’s hard to see beyond foldable devices as more than a tech demo for something that might emerge in a hardier, cheaper form in regular smartphones. What that might be is anybody’s guess.