Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/03/folding-phones-are-an-unfoldin.html
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If they become the standard with all the problems resolved I’ll still be a late adopter. I don’t like the trend towards larger phones and screens. They already weight too much and take up too much room in my pocket.
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I prefer phablets myself, but I don’t care for spending $bigbucks for something that’s obsolete in two years. There are good ones under $300, though.
Did Samsung decide to be “courageous” again and omit the headphone jack?
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Maybe Motorola is going to win this round with their Razr reboot. They might even continue to partner up with iFixit and put out repair kits to go with it.
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I work at a major cell carrier’s national hq.
I saw a guy with a galaxy fold in the elevator a week ago. He was holding it like it was an organ being transported for donation.
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I’d pay real money for an android sidekick.
Ror some reason tmobile’s ceo is dead against developing one.
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HTC Desire Z with modern innards. It’ll never happen, because everything is awful, but hey. A boy can dream, right?
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The depressing thing is that, on all the points raised in the article, folding phones are different more in degree than in kind from the more prosaic ones.
It obviously stings more when it’s a $2k device, has a life expectancy that even a red army penal battalion would consider a bit on the short side; and the part that is first to fail will probably end up being an $800-$1000 FRU even if the vendor is in a really, really cooperative mood; but the phenomenon of being a delicate device whose software and replacements remain under the control of the vendor more or less permanently(by virtue of a combination of crypto bootloaders and overt GPL noncompliance) runs the gamut from $20 prepaid trash phones locked down to ensure that they make back their subsidy on the correct carrier to $1000+ flagship stuff.
Cellphones are pretty much the computers too dystopian(and sleek) for the dystopian cyberpunk retrofuture.
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Nokia Communicator for me. Really, an E90 form factor running android (maybe a somewhat bigger internal screen) would be perfect.
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I have to agree. I don’t own an iPhone SE because it was cheap (although that didn’t hurt), I own one because unlike most other phones it fits my hands. I don’t want a larger screen so I can watch movies on it- that’s what the TV is for.
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I had one like that years ago. It was the LG Voyager, and I loved having a physical keyboard.
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I absolutely loved my Sidekick. One of the best phones I ever owned. It was a shame it was tied to T-Mobile’s shitty network at the time. I could be standing literally right next to T-Mobile’s pink monstrosity headquarters building with 0 bars. (And, yes, I realize it’s not like they filled their roof with cell towers, but it made for a funny anecdote as to how shitty their service was.)
It’s a real shame that the Kin was such a flop – it had the potential to be a great follow-up to the Sidekick (and had many of the same designers working on it).
These days software keyboards are good enough that I don’t often find myself missing a hardware keyboard.
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True, and I’m used to my Galaxy s4’s on-screen keyboard now. But if the touchscreen dies, the phone becomes nothing more than a fancy brick. At least with a physical keyboard, I’d know I could still make calls. >shrug<
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Software keyboards are the main reason why I prefer bigger phones. It’s just too awkward for me to type on a small screen.
I still have an old phone with a physical keyboard - a Samsung model grandly billed as the “Galaxy S Relay 4G” where “4G” was really 3G. From day one it was “almost but not quite good enough” due to only having a dual-core CPU and not much RAM. It did run CyanogenMod nicely, though… and then CM imploded. Given that 3G is very rapidly disappearing, it’s basically a Wi-Fi SIP phone at this point.
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In a box full of ice? They run too hot, too? 
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if it’s samsung, I’m surprised it doesn’t burst into flames.
