No one could have ever seen this coming
But but but my pocket companion? My AI slop firehose?
My engagement terminal???
MY ONLY FRIEND
Precision engineered hype and sales.
Precision seemingly doesn’t really matter if the design is shit.
it’s folded 10,000 times by an expert Japanese phonesmith before it reaches the consumer. It does make it a little brittle but do you want a phone that’s not been properly broken in? It’s just the price you pay for tradition and brand loyalty.
Looks like Apple should have made sure their precision engineered hinge was also accurate engineered.
Would you make a quality product if you knew that people would buy it no matter what?
Yes, which is one of the many many reasons I’ll never be a billionaire (unless the currency devalues by more than three orders of magnitude).
this is like the Samsung Fold all over again…
This looks more like a ford pinto situation. It was fine, bean counters tweaked something they thought was inconsequential to make it cheaper, they were not engineers are were wrong and ruined it.
We need the post mortum
Aren’t they the ones making this screen as well? They make pretty much every oled screen in the world.
hmm maybe
They are, though this is a different issue than their foldables I believe.
No it’s like the iPhone 6 ‘Bend Gate’ all over again.
I’m so glad I never fell for this gimmick. The tech looked sketchy from the beginning.
When the screen is fully floppy, that’s when Im in. Flexible electronic paper exists. Why not in a phone?
Probably because that stuff would fail if you carried it around in your pocket with your keys and folded it 8000 times, too.
I’m sure you’d get more than three days out of it…
If you’re talking about eInk, the refresh rate and color fidelity are unacceptable for an apple device. There are eink phones on AliExpress, though. Just don’t expect apple-level quality.
And while Moebius uses a plastic substrate, Carta and Kaleido use glass and can be pretty fragile. My Boox reader’s display cracked when I worked it out of its case.
It could be e-ink, but I was talking more about the paper properties.
For people who don’t watch video on mobile, an e-ink display would be great. I just wish there were more options.
Hardly matters, the sort of people who buy such a pointless, gimicky and overly expensive phone will keep buying Apple regardless.
I bought a refurbished Samsung Fold 5 and I returned it after one week. A phone isn’t something that I should have to babysit.
I like tech, I think it’s cool, and expensive features almost always become cheap or standard features in the future.
When someone figures out how to do this well, I will definitely want a folding phone. Although I want a phone that folds half the size of a normal phone, not a normal phone size that folds out to a tablet.
Although I want a phone that folds half the size of a normal phone, not a normal phone size that folds out to a tablet.
You already got a joking reply to this with someone mentioning a regular flip phone, but Samsung does actually make what you’re asking for, the “Z Flip” line of phones, which have been developed in lock step with the more popular Z Fold series. Most recent is the Z Flip8 from this year.
And the Motorola RAZRs
Google and Huawei also make them.
I’m refering to the flip models. I forgot if Huawei still makes them, but Google definitely doesn’t
Supposedly Huawei is just about to announce their next Flip. Their last one came out in October last year. I think they focused on the Fold because they wanted to position it as the foldable iPhone competitor, plus it’s the flagship for their new chipset.
I am going to have to look into the durability of those. I often buy my phone a few generations behind and refurbished.
I kinda have a feeling that when they get this folding tech working properly and affordably, it’s going to start replacing gaming consoles for the younger generation. Most people have a phone, and many people can’t afford >£1k for a console. It’s sad, IMO, but kinda predictable.
they make those
Samsung Fold and Pixel Fold have been getting it reliable for years now.
But if you want half size, look at the Razr and its like $500 not $2000.
They seem to hold up well enough, but I’m pretty anal about my glasses, screens, and monitors to be clean. And seeing the fold reflect light differently in the middle of the screen would not be a pleasant experience. The punchole cameras are had enough!
It would probably drive me nuts. Everyone told me: you can hardly see it. I do, it’s there, it’s always there and it will always be there.
Pretty much this. We had this multiple times already with different tech. For example “bezelless” phones were desired for years and they kept and kept making them smaller, at some point some manufacturers really forced it in premium models and then some time later it suddenly became pretty much standard.
SadTrombone.WAV
Oh, well. I’m sure there’ll be yet another model they’re pushing in a week or two. SELL! SELL! SELL!
Just seems like such an obvious issue to spend so much money om
I am an old IT guy. This was a hard and fast rule: Never buy version 1.0 of anything.
Counterpoint: if you want version 4.0 of something. Someone needs to prove it’s viability.
You can buy v1.0, just know it for what it is and only buy in if you can accept the risk.
I never bought a folding phone, but I want one and I appreciate the early adopters.
I was an early adopter for mobile phones, and I was so fuckin excited to get one! Bought one of those things that would be a brick today, had a mouthpiece you had to flip down, and an aerial you had to pull up. Back then it seemed like sleek star trek tech. Took it back to the shop because the signal infrastructure just wasn’t there. Stuck with my pager for another couple of years lol
There are always others who want to be first and have that ‘look at me’ factor. Let them jump and prance through the first few versions while the kinks are worked out.
As a occasional bleeding edge buyer - I disagree with the motive of ‘look at me’. (caveat: This post is entirely ‘look at me’, but I’m proving my point, not desiring attention, and have never even thought about my purchases this way until now)
I had an HTC Magic - one of the very early Android phones - not because I wanted to be cool, but because I wanted the tech and google was still this sort of open, consumer-friendly company at the time vs Apple. That phone was pretty solid compared to the candy-bar or flip phones of the era, aside from battery life, but compared to modern smart phones it was garbage.
I had an OG Rift VR headset (CV1). It did what it claimed, but it was low resolution, clunky, heavy, and unpleasant to use. But now we have Steam’s Frame.
When I was a teenager, working retail at a tech store, I saved up to buy an early LCD monitor. Now you can’t even buy CRTs outside of niche vendors.
I want quality EVs. I never bought a Tesla, but I wanted one before the crazy came out and just couldn’t afford it. Now we have every auto manufacturer making EV options.
I want quality folding phones, but my normal shape phone is still functional and I haven’t needed to buy a new one for a few years. When I do, it’ll probably fold. I’ll be v3 or so by that time, but still showing there’s a desire.
I want to be clear that I’m not disagreeing with your ‘let others work out the kinks’, but sometimes I’m fine with having the first iterations because I want the resulting tech.
Consider this my investment strategy - but instead of personal profit, I’m investing in innovation.
Same goes for the first model year of vehicles
Yup.
This shouldn’t be a 1.0 version of a phone with a folding screen, though, android phones have been doing this for a loooong time now and they are not and haven’t been flaky tech for some time now. I guess you’re right about Apple and this SKU, though. A bit surprising, I’m not an iPhone person but I always expect them to do pretty rigorous QA.
It is ver 1.0 for Apple. Same as touchscreen for laptops. Apple hasn’t done it.
Don’t they use Samsung displays though? If so I would have expected a similarly matured display vs this but maybe that is no longer the case anymore. It has been well over a decade since I cared about anything iPhone related, so I could be well out of date here
They’re always a few versions behind, but somehow manage to get credit for the “innovation”.
That’s called marketing. And a customer base willing to eat whatever garbage you’re feeding them.
“it just works” has been wrong for so long
Sh.itjust.works
It just works
somewhat
They just call their stuff random names?
Oh this? It’s our dingligongle 5000. No, no it only LOOKS like a USB cable, but see that apple logo?
100% this, leave the first generation to the professionals (eg. reviewers) to find all the obvious flaws - then pick up the 2nd or 3rd iteration once they get most of the kinks ironed out.
Anything with a folding screen would also work…
It is sold anyway, nothing burger in the end.
