Tech

Folding smartphones: future or bubble?

Just a month ago I was wondering if 2022 will be the year of folding smartphones, and that is This year we will see news from Honor, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Samsung and probably more. However, if the rumor that we told you yesterday is confirmed, it is possible that Apple is still thinking about whether or not to jump into that pool with its long-awaited folding iPhone. And it is that, according to this rumor, in Cupertino they would have doubts about whether folding smartphones are a passing fad or, on the contrary, they have come to stay.

You don’t have to go far to find more opinions in this regard. In the same comments on the news about the folding iPhone that we published yesterday, we can find the opinion of a reader who is also quite skeptical about the folding ones. And if we go around the Internet, we will find many similar opinions, whichThey point out that folding smartphones are expensive, fragile and of little use. What about each of those points?

Regarding the first, the price, I do not think anyone dares to argue that point. Today folding smartphones are too expensive for most. And yes, it is understandable, since we are talking about quite a novel technology, but of course, such a high entry level can play very against its popularization, which in turn compromises its presence in the market in the medium term. , precisely the supposed fear of Apple.

Folding smartphones: future or bubble?

Now, as we already told you a few weeks ago, during 2022 we could witness the decrease in these prices, so that the prices of some models can be compared to those of the flagship of these brands. We are not talking about a great discount, and at least in the first instance it would only affect certain models, but we must not forget that all the folding smartphone proposals are high-end terminals, so at this first moment, the prices would be equal.

Regarding its fragility, it is true that the manufacturers affirm that they have subjected their folding smartphones to a multitude of tests, much of them dedicated to verifying the performance of the hinge and the reliability of the screen, and I am convinced that it really is. , and that laboratory tests point to excellent results. But nevertheless, It is true that we still do not have feedback from users who have been using them for a long time.. Thus, we will still have to wait a while to confirm that they really are as resistant and reliable as their manufacturers claim.

And we come to the third point: folding smartphones are of little use, and this is the point with which I disagree the most. If we review the history of mobile telephony from its origins to the present time, we see that there has been a most striking movement. At first they were simply huge. Over the years their size was normalizing, and there were even some years in which the desire to make them smaller and smaller could go a bit far.

However, then smartphones arrived, and because their usefulness depended on the size of the screen, that process was reversed, mobiles started to get bigger again. Not thicker, yes, but its width and height began to regain the proportions of yesteryear, when they seemed enormous to us. As an example, a few years ago I took a photo with the first mobile I had, a Motorola 6300 and, around 20 years later, the one I had just bought, an iPhone 6S Plus, judge for yourself:

Folding smartphones: future or bubble?

I personally like big phones, because I like large screens, but I know of a thousand cases in which these current sizes are not quite comfortable, and it is in this context that folding smartphones can fit perfectly. That the size of the screen is no longer the one that determines the size of the device means breaking a barrier that a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable to us, and that however is now (relatively) within our reach.

And this is just the beginning. If folding smartphones finally become popular, we could see another of the predictions made by Nicholas Negroponte come true in Being Digital, back in the 90s. Screens, in various formats, have come to stay, at least in the short and medium term, and the option that they can be the size of a tablet, but at the time to carry them only occupy the size of a smartphone, it seems a great advance.

Thus, personally I am optimistic, but I also understand the opinions against and, what is more, I find it very interesting to hear them, and I do not resist at all to change my opinion, What do you think? Do you see a future for folding smartphones or, on the contrary, do you think they are a fad that will not last? What do you think are its strengths, and its weaknesses?

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