Foldable phones are supposed to be the next big thing with multiple companies vying for your pocket. Toms' Guide speaks with everyday people about what they think and ask MrMobile to break down the foldable pros and cons. Plus, Samsung, Google and Motorola weigh in on how they’re trying to take foldables mainstream with the Galaxy Z Fold 5, Pixel Fold and new Motorola Razr.
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00:00Remember the Motorola RAZR?
00:02Before smartphones, flip phones were considered the pinnacle of mobile technology,
00:06and the RAZR was an icon.
00:08Released in 2004, it quickly became the envy of everyone from executives to teams.
00:13But with the advent of the iPhone, the flip phone was dead.
00:18In the background, phoneable started as crazy concepts,
00:21but that all changed in 2019 when Samsung released the original Galaxy Fold.
00:26Four generations later, we now have the Galaxy Z Fold 5,
00:30Google has released the Pixel Fold, and Motorola has resuscitated the RAZR.
00:34There's even rumors of a foldable iPhone.
00:36I'll be chatting with some of the leading names in the space to ask the question,
00:40are foldable phones here to stay? And who's going to win this new war?
00:48Yes, tech nerds like me use foldable phones.
00:51But what about everyday people?
00:53We're here in New York City and Times Square to see how familiar people are
00:57with foldables outside of the tech world.
01:01Have you guys seen foldable phones before?
01:04What do you mean by foldable phone?
01:06Yeah, like a flip phone. That's throwback. That's back in the day.
01:09Only on the commercial.
01:10Have you ever seen a foldable phone?
01:12Yes.
01:13Oh, okay. Okay, great.
01:14Samsung! Korean! Yay!
01:18So this is the new Z Flip 5 from Samsung.
01:21What do you think of this design? Is this something that you would carry?
01:24Sure, because it's so small.
01:26Yeah!
01:27I really like it, because as women we don't have a lot of space in our pockets,
01:32so I think it's more practical.
01:34But I don't know, it looks fragile in the middle as well.
01:37It looks like the screen is going to break, but I think I have the fear of it.
01:42You don't like it?
01:43No.
01:44I think it reminds me of the old phones, like the Nokia ones.
01:48The Nokia ones, yes.
01:50What do you think of a design like this?
01:52That's fire. That's hot.
01:54Yeah?
01:55Yeah, I like that.
01:56It's kind of scary, though. I don't want this to break on the outside.
01:59So the other type of design that's out is the book-style foldable.
02:03This is way too big, but if I want a tablet, maybe I can use it.
02:07But you think you might use something like this?
02:09Yeah, yeah, definitely. Especially this one.
02:11The other one looks a little old-fashioned, and I think this one is really futuristic.
02:16Yeah, yeah.
02:17Okay, so this one is $1,000.
02:19Okay.
02:20This is $1,800.
02:23Do you think either of them might be worth that much money?
02:26No.
02:28I think this one is too much.
02:30No, it's super expensive, yeah.
02:32$1,800.
02:33This one?
02:34Yeah.
02:35What?
02:36$1,800?
02:37Yes.
02:38I don't know.
02:39With a phone plan, you can do it. You can make it work.
02:42Maybe a little bit expensive, but maybe in the future it will be way cheaper.
02:47Which company is it?
02:48This is Samsung.
02:49Ah, Samsung, okay. I'm only iPhone. I don't like Samsung.
02:53If Apple have a phone like this, I will change to a phone like this.
02:57There you have it. Maybe foldable phones are still a niche product.
03:00So are they worth up to $2,000?
03:02Let's go ask Mr. Mobile himself.
03:05Michael Fisher is Mr. Mobile, a smartphone expert with over a million subscribers on YouTube.
03:10As someone who has reviewed all the major foldables so far, I asked him to break this trend down and pick some of his favorites.
03:16The definition of a foldable is pretty simple.
03:19It's a phone with a hinge on it that either becomes smaller when you close it,
03:24or it's a phone with a hinge on it that lets it become larger when you open it.
03:29A phone that becomes a tablet, or a phone that becomes a smaller phone.
03:32The principal benefits of a foldable are that they're multimodal.
03:36They change shape based on what you need them to do.
03:39So with the large one, I have a big canvas for getting work done.
03:42I can run multiple apps side by side, and I can leave my laptop at home sometimes.
03:46The small one, for influencer duties, I can take photos.
03:50It's its own tripod. I put it down. I don't need to carry around extra gear with me.
03:55Then I close it, put it away.
03:57The principal problems with foldables right now are that they are expensive and that they are fragile.
04:03The price is already coming down, so that won't be a problem for much longer.
04:08But the fragility of a device with moving parts and a display that is made of ultra-thin glass
04:13that has to bend hundreds of times a day, that might take a little longer.
04:17And because foldables rely on moving parts and gaps,
04:20they are more difficult to make resistant to water, and particularly dust.
04:25So some of them are rated for rain. You can drop them in the pool. They'll be okay.
04:29But dust is the real hazard to a foldable, because if it gets inside there, it can cause damage.
04:34My favorite foldables, I always carry two, because I've got the night and weekend phone,
04:38and I've got the workday phone, large format, and flip phone.
04:43Motorola's Razr, not this one, but the fancier one, the Razr Plus,
04:46I carry when I don't need to do so much work, because it's so thin and delightful and beautiful and gorgeous, frankly.
04:53And this is the OnePlus Open. It's light. It's the right shape. It's gorgeous.
05:00And it has software that does some interesting things, and we haven't seen that in foldables in a minute.
05:05To me, the appeal of a foldable phone is that it's the first smartphone in years that has changed the way I use a phone.
05:13So you don't have a phone and an e-reader, or a phone and an iPad, or a phone and all these devices.
05:18You have a phone that becomes all these other things, and that's really compelling.
05:24The latest foldables feel like they're about to break through to the masses, but how did we get here?
05:30The idea of a foldable phone, which could transform from a compact device into a larger screen when needed,
05:35has been a topic of discussion among tech enthusiasts and manufacturers for years.
05:39Concepts and prototypes of foldable phones started emerging as early as the mid-2000s.
05:43Samsung made significant progress in the development of foldable phones and showcased their first prototype in 2011.
05:49However, the tech was still in its infancy, and the prototype did not lead to a commercially available product.
05:54The key breakthrough was the development of flexible display technology.
05:58Samsung and LG invested in research and development to create flexible OLED panels that could bend without damaging the screen.
06:05And so, in 2019, Samsung launched their first commercially available foldable phone, the Galaxy Fold.
06:11It featured a 7.3-inch flexible display, allowing users to have a compact, phone-like form factor or unfold it into a tablet-like experience.
06:19Others joined the arena, including Motorola, who revived its iconic Razr brand with a Motorola Razr,
06:25featuring a vertically folding display reminiscent of the classic flip phone design.
06:30Today, foldable phones are still niche, primarily due to their high price tags and the relative novelty of the technology.
06:36However, with advancements in manufacturing processes and increased competition,
06:40prices have started to come down gradually, making foldable phones more accessible to a broader audience.
06:46To find out more, I sat down with some of the pioneers developing the next generation of foldables at Samsung, Motorola, and newcomer, Google.
06:53This has been a long time coming. Today, we're here with George Wang, who has designed and brought to market the Google Pixel Fold.
07:00One of the things that really stands out is the exterior display and the aspect ratio that you guys chose.
07:05How did you decide on the size and how wide it should be?
07:09The first thing is we actually looked at data.
07:11We were trying to see, well, how often do people use their phones?
07:15And really, what do they do on their phones to try to make some decisions?
07:19We saw that the 99th percentile of the user unlocks their phone and uses their phone about 200 times per day.
07:25So a lot of interactions. And the majority of those are actually quite short interactions.
07:30Right.
07:31Sending a quick text message, changing the song.
07:33So we really focused on giving a phone-first type of design here that's very similar to the phone that I'm showing you.
07:39That's very similar to the phone that I'm sure you have in your pocket.
07:41Yep.
07:42And then the benefits of that is actually when you unfold it, it gives you a large 7.6-inch display.
07:48That's really beneficial for things like media consumption as well as multitasking, which are key use cases.
07:53So how important is having a 3.6-inch external display on the new Razr?
07:59It is important to get that extra space.
08:03We're even seeing, hey, is there an opportunity to go bigger? And how much bigger?
08:08And where's the line and where's the limit?
08:11For us right now, we've really made apps more usable.
08:16We've expanded capabilities so that someone can transition or choose when they want to transition their apps from the inside display to the outside display.
08:24We've also enabled full-screen view, which allows the user to easily switch between an app going into full screen taking over the entire display,
08:34which is really useful in particular for apps where you're showing a QR code or in maps when you want to see just a bit more view of where you're walking or where you're driving.
08:45But of course, it's user-specific.
08:47So some users may spend more time in that outside display and others might spend less.
08:53For us, it's important to make sure that even though we have something that's pocketable, we're still providing usefulness to that pocketability.
09:01It sounds like Google is aligned with Motorola when it comes to use cases for the front display.
09:05But what about form factor?
09:07What do you think about flip-style foldable phones?
09:10The thing for us is we want to focus specifically on this form factor because everything we can kind of bring to it
09:15and ensure that we can kind of solve some key user issues from the design to the apps as well as the camera.
09:22And so we're quite confident in what we're doing with this, but we're always exploring other types of devices and other types of technologies.
09:28Samsung are the veterans when it comes to foldables.
09:30So how do they see the market share growing versus their other flagships?
09:34We've got big goals for foldables.
09:36Our goal is by 2025 that that's 50% of our global flagship mix.
09:41And at the moment, I would say we're kind of well on our way towards that trajectory.
09:45But if the Z Fold 5 is $1,800, will cost be a blocker in that vision?
09:50Foldables eventually will come down to price.
09:52This year, we really focused on resolving the pain points that we saw for our current foldable user base.
09:57So with fold, a lot of that had to do with the form factor, making it slimmer, making it lighter weight,
10:03powerful processing, our brand new latest processor.
10:06And on flip, a lot of that was driven through the flex window and so that cover screen experience.
10:11And so we're really focused on continuing to refine the experience.
10:14Of course, over time, as the technology evolves, we'll continue to see innovation
10:20and hopefully bring it down in price point at a future time.
10:22The regular Razr, which has been reimagined for a more affordable price point.
10:26What do people need to know?
10:28It really is lovely in that we were able to retain a lot of the similar high quality elements from Razr Plus to Razr.
10:38You do have that smaller display, so you can't do as much.
10:41You might close it to really close your phone and be done using it,
10:44as opposed to close it and then be able to do more interactions.
10:48But you can do basic tasks from the external display.
10:51You can see your weather, you can see your calendar, you'll be able to view notifications, the time, of course.
10:56But you will have to open it to do more of the things that you would regularly want to do throughout your day.
11:04Even though we've taken things away, we've added certain things in lieu of that.
11:08So it has a smaller display on the outside, but it has a larger battery.
11:12Even though we have something that will be meaningfully more affordable, it still is a high quality device.
11:20So what does the future look like?
11:22Well, the way I like to think about it is that I have twins at home that are four and a half years old.
11:27And if you just think about your own evolution of the phones you've had over the years,
11:33evolved from maybe not having a phone to flip-type phones to bar-type phones,
11:38they're going to go through that same evolution.
11:40And if you just think forward, whether that be whether they're in high school or at some point in my age,
11:46they're not going to be carrying around a bar-type smartphone.
11:48It's going to be foldables, it's going to be different form factors.
11:51I think the innovation that we're seeing today is just the starting point and scratching the surface
11:55of what's going to be a huge new wave of different form factors.
12:00And we're really excited to be on the cutting edge of that.
12:04With that kind of competition driving the market, we can anticipate three things.
12:07Prices to drop, more innovation in terms of form factor and durability, and also more brands entering the fray.
12:13One of them could be Apple, but rumors of a foldable iPhone are at least a year away.
12:17So what's the future of foldable phones?
12:19Stay tuned as it unfolds to see if they can really break through to the masses.
12:29Microsoft Mechanics
12:31www.microsoft.com
12:33www.microsoft.com