![]() ![]() You can feel it as you swipe up and down the screen, you can see it if you hold the phone at an angle, and if you’re the sort to let yourself get annoyed by it, it will almost certainly drive you mad. The devices have come a long way since folding phones first arrived on the scene, but it’s still hard to forget that the phone has a big crease down the middle where it folds in half. That’s good because the Flip and Fold 3 do not completely erase their other major weak spot: the hinge itself. The Fold 3 lops £200 off that, bringing the phone down to £1,599, but the real standout is the Flip 3, which is starting at £949, well under the – analysts assure me – Psychologically Important £1,000 Line. The glaring hindrance last time round was the price. One day relatively soon folding screen devices will be mainstream and we need devices like the Z Fold 2 to make that happen. The Z Fold 2 is exciting, useful in ways you may not expect and proves that the future of smartphones, tablets and computers is one unified adaptable device. The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is an absolute triumph for Samsung, cementing foldable screen devices as not only a possible novelty but as an actually good, useful device worth buying right now. ![]() Our consumer technology editor, Samuel Gibbs, had nothing but good things to say about the previous generation of the Galaxy Fold, for instance: And that’s despite generally good reviews. Folding phones are a couple of years old, now, and yet they’re still a novelty on the street. ![]() Pierce may be right that the future is folding, but the campaign for Samsung is to convince people that the present is, too. I’ve been through this for decades, I know it’s inevitable that folding will become the de-facto form factor for these devices.” ![]() “The future is folding, it’s only a matter of time. “When you walk into a store, ‘do you want a folding phone or do you want a flat phone’ should be the first question you’re asked. “What we want to try to do is maybe disrupt and change the game when it comes to an OS conversation,” Pierce said. His goal for the future is to change how we talk about smartphones – and ideally, to shift it away from a world of Apple v the rest. At the launch of the two devices, I spoke to Conor Pierce, who leads its mobile division in the UK and Ireland. But those are icing on the cake: the success, or failure, of the concept hinges (sorry) on whether a folding phone is actually something you want. The two phones have a bevy of software features to take advantage of their foldability, from using the rear screen to show a preview of a photo to its subject to letting the device stay half open and chucking, say, playback controls on the bottom half and a video on the top. A miniature screen on the outside serves to show basic notifications, and enable a simple selfie mode you can use without even opening it up. But fold it in half vertically, and it becomes a perfect square, about the size of a well-filled wallet, and compact enough to fit in a pocket. Unfolded, the phone is fairly traditional if a bit on the large side. I was never a fan of the iPad mini, which felt awkwardly neither small enough to be particularly portable nor large enough to be a significant improvement on a phone, and the Fold feels in-hand like a compromise on a compromise, neither collapsing small enough to feel as good as a smartphone nor expanding well enough to completely do its job as a tablet.īut the Flip 3 is a different story. But unfold it like a book, and it becomes a device closer in size to an iPad mini, a tablet form factor beloved by its users but curiously abandoned by Apple over the past few years in favour of the chunkier (and more expensive) full-size models.įor me, it’s hard to love. When the phone is in its folded state, it looks like a normal – albeit extremely thick – smartphone, with a screen on one side and a big camera on the other. Of the two, the Fold 3 is more traditional. ![]()
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