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+--- Thread: First Folding Phone: A Flop or a Promise? (/thread-49639.html)
First Folding Phone: A Flop or a Promise? - kevinjohnson - 12-01-2020
If we look at it from the perspective of a person from a decade ago, we are truly living in the future. What used to be a thing of science fiction is now a reality. Just hark back to sci-fi movies from a few years ago such as Minority Report and Star Trek. We used to see small and large touchscreen interfaces being operated by people in these movies. At the time, thinking of something like that existing in our real physical world seemed like an impossibility. But here we are today and touchscreens have become the norm.
Small touchscreens on our smartphones as well as large touchscreens in restaurants and educational institutes are a part of daily life.
Such is the reality of progress. Smartphones are probably the best example of the rate at which technology matures, and innovations come into play. Almost every year, we see ground-breaking features and innovations in the smartphone landscape. We started with tiny screens surrounded by massive bezels and moved to large screens with no bezels at all. When saturation in the technology space seems to be rearing its ugly head, some other revelations come to the surface.
In 2019, the story is no different. We’ve successfully got a host of bezel-less smartphones by now. The next step is folding phones. Folding touchscreen phones have been a dream for tech enthusiasts for years now. Throughout the past few years, many manufacturers have teased folding displays in prototype form, but due to technical limitations, we've never seen folding screens successfully implemented in a usable form. But the patience finally seems to be bearing fruit. The promise of folding phones being used as both a phone and tablet is extremely enticing. 'Write my assignment cheap online' can call, play, and work on the same device.
Leading the race for folding phones is Samsung’s Galaxy Fold – a phone that marks the start of the next generation. But, being a first generation concept, it has already been mired with problems. Screen malfunctions and developing bugs have been an alarmingly frequent occurrence for reviewers who’ve received these phones. That might be a huge downturn for a phone that costs close to $2000. But we shouldn’t dismiss Samsung that quickly. After all, this is the first instance we’ve seen of a mass-produced, mainstream folding phone. Failures are to be expected. The good news is that Samsung is aware of the problems and is actively working on it. What’s even more promising is that Samsung has committed to releasing such phones at the time it promised.
There’s another silver lining to this whole folding phone fiasco as well. Samsung’s folding phone isn’t the only one we’ll be seeing this year. As many as three other manufacturers, including Huawei and Xiaomi, are set to release their versions as well, with rumours of Apple joining the race soon. To say that folding phones are just a gimmick due to the setbacks that Samsung’s phone has incurred would be a folly. All major shifts in technology experience setbacks during their initial stages. Just compare the first iPhone and its inconsistencies with the latest one to get an idea of how technology matures over time.