The two things that appeal to me about the folding phone are (1) protecting the screen from scratches, especially in my pocket or backpack and (2) that when folded, I wont accidentally touch the screen in a way that will register as a click or swipe. The last one in particular is super annoying to me. However, it doesn't seem like the technology is ready for this yet since it sounds like the folding mechanism breaks easily. And ofc, I never buy anything Apple.
My FP3 hanged around in my pocket unprotected for 4 years and still has no scratch on its screen. I feel like the industry learned how to make basically indestructible glass for a while (except if you casually put diamonds in the same pocket).
For 2, the issue is most phones have a lock screen overview sorta effect, where the phone can wake up from sleep with movement or gestures. Actions on the lock screen can hence trigger things, like media playback and emergency dialling
I have one, it's nice because it actually fits in my pocket and has a stable center of gravity. Every other phone I've had would regularly fall out of my pockets, and that's how they would become broken or lost. I bought mine used last year, and it's still in great condition.
I just want phones to be fun again. There's a YouTube series literally called 'When Phones were Fun'. Where a guy presents all of these models from different manufacturers in the 2000s that all had these crazy but unique phone designs.
Small phones, sliding keyboard phones, compacting phones, media device phones .etc that just had character to them.
But no, we've been living in an era of phones where they're just a series of degrees of rectangular shapes. This one is tall, this one is a little wider and it's just boring. Flipping the phone inward of itself isn't really that interesting because it's just a flip phone now with a screen that can do it.
Most of those other types of phones aren't around anymore because nobody bought them. Sure, small phones are great and I even had a 13 mini, but I'm one of like 20 people who bought it. I've never ever seen a sliding keyboard phone in the wild, just on YouTube. Same for those other more eclectic devices. The market has spoken, and it said "giant slabs of glass please".
Full market saturation. They're washing machines now. We shouldn't be caring so hard about them anymore. We're pretty much at the peak of mobile telephony the way we know it. Let's come up with something totally new and focus on other tech. It's like still being excited over mass-distributed electricity 40 years after its rollout.
That's not my experience. I've got a 13 mini for 2 years now and I can go one day easily. I charge every night anyway, so it's more than enough for me. On low power mode, it's probably more like 2 days.
I kinda like the idea of a phone that is usually small, but I can make big by unfolding it if I want to. But I do agree that the fewer moving parts, the sturdier and more BIFL. It's just that BIFL is not really attainable anyways in the current state of the phone market due to software support obsoletion.
I'd like to see a small eink phone or the tiny matchbook from Her.
They’ve had these things for like 6-8 years or so now and it’s the same problem
Edit: please explain to me how “it still has the same problem” conflicts with “it’s gotten a lot better”? I know it’s gotten better. That’s neat. It’s still not solved.
My point is that I personally consider the simple existence of the issue to disqualify it as something I’d buy. I would consider it if it is no longer a problem. Not improved - eliminated. You’re not going to negotiate, debate, or downvote me into changing my mind on that. It’s a physical defect that’s an artifact of the design and the current technology used to satisfy that design.
The same problem, but is has dramatically improved. Comparing the visibility and feel of the ridge on foldable phones from even two years ago to today is night and day. My roommate has the newest Samsung Flip and even coming directly from my phone its hardly noticeable.
So then don't buy a folding phone until they make that better.
No one is saying that everyone should having a folding phone. But it seems obvious that the ability to have a large screen that fits in your pocket is a great feature that many people value. There are downsides, but for some people the upsides outweigh them. For other people (like you) they don't and you can continue to get a non-folding phone.
Yeah but folding screens though. I was never that interested, but then I held one with my own eyes and I instant got the merit if it. I don't need one, but if I had Beyonce money I would for sure want one.
You mean that having N+1 sensors every other year is redundant. My phone is 4 years old and had already a quite bad camera at that time so I wouldn't know.
Seeing photos from other people it's obvious how good phones have become (even if there might be some overengineering), on the other hand my phone also had a bad CPU / RAM / Battery / Screen for the time and people who have phones with more computing power than my laptop do the exact same things as I do.
After almost a year with mine I don't think I'll go back to a normal phone. Having a small phone that fits in the palm of my hand and I can make full size works for me personally. If I didn't have the external screen and it was a full sized phone that opened I'd probably agree.
I've had the z fold 3, 4, 5 and pixel fold, right there with you. I mostly hear the complaints about people thinking folding phones are dumb from sites where people are more likely to have serious opinions on what phone you should buy, like here and reddit. To be honest everytime someone sees my phone for the first time they're super interested in it and could see themselves buying one; the real issue is the price. As soon as I mention that it's probably 3x the price of their current phone, that's the end of that lol. Hopefully they can get the price down to regular slab phones. Once they do I think they'll start to seriously compete because I think this form factor is incredible.
Of course Google is implementing the feature via Google Play Services. I get why, but man is it frustrating for everyone who doesn't use or want Google Play Services on their phones. Hopefully other OSes can build this functionality in.
It's a double edge sword, I'd would be nice to be built directly into Android AOSP, but at the same time if it was, phones without the latest Android wouldn't even have it
They could easily put it in both and then use whichever is most up-to-date (would probably default to play services on any non-AOSP or degoogled ROM), which is what they would do if they actually cared about protecting users. But that would recognize degoogled ROMs as a legitimate platform, which Google doesn't want🙄
I don't know. I know some older midrange phones tried it out. I wonder if the main benefit is to heal the crease from the screen being unfolded or if it is to protection the softer screen surface. I hope it solves the former issue.
I’ve read through the above Samsung patent and the Apples one. The one main difference I found was that Apple is talking about a heating layer between the other layer in the display that can initiate the selfhealing process (which could be initiated by the user, on schedule, or while charging the battery). I haven’t see a mention of such thing in the Samsung patent. Plus, Apples patent doesn’t seem to go into detail regarding the materials of the layer, only that it can be made out of „suitable materials”.
Apple made no announcement or advertisement of any sort. Government patent examiners, after careful review, determined this is a novel invention or improvement. It's not possible for your comment to be any more literally wrong than it is.
It feels like… „selfhealing? I heard that before. Apple? Ah yes, don’t like. Apple does nothing new and here is a patent that has the word selfhealing in it too”
My partner has been using a Samsung Fold for two years, the one that folds open into a small tablet. It looked nice at first but it hasn’t held up well. There’s this film on the screen that you’re not supposed to remove and it’s deteriorating fast. There are these little patches on the screen that look sort of like bubbles. Plus even from the start you could see the crease in the middle of the screen.
It was the crease I always knew was going to happen. Tech is cool but terrible in practice. Too short of a lifespan. Buddy bought one Amy time he happily showed me his phone in hopes of swaying me to it, that's all I couod see was the crease. 1.5 years later, back to normal phone..
The crease doesn't matter. Had a fold 3 for almost 3 years, and the crease has never bothered me. You dont see it when using the devices. you do from other angles, but even then, it's dependant on external light. I have never found a situation where the crease being there has ever been a problem. And I challenge you to give me a good example.
This is the one thing people say that I feel is mostly rooted in a form of propaganda, or like a rumour if that makes sense. You have been told about the crease and it was made to sound bad you personally believe the crease would be bad and it all joins up to form a strange, baseless bias that the crease is bad. You have admitted yourself that you dont own one, so I can safely assume you haven't held one for long enough to realise that the crease wouldn't bother you if you had one of these phones.
Also, like I said, I've had mine for almost 3 years and it's still going strong. I replaced the screen protector once because I accidentally scratched it but I did that myself with a £15 kit I got on amazon. So the lifespan is fine. Your bias is unfounded. You should use one as a daily driver for a bit and than review your opinion.
Edit. Inb4 "you're butthurt". Idc. I dont think I am, because I'm just arguing the side of someone who has one, but I dont mind if you wanna think im just angry cause you insulted my choice to buy one. I know from personal experience the only real downside to this phone is the narrow outer screen and that only really bothers me when I'm watching video, but then why would I use the outer screen for that? For general use that screen is fine.
that was my case as well with the fold 2. I upgraded to the fold 5 since launch last year and can say the toughness on the main screen between the fold 2 and 5 is night and day. not a single scratch or bubble anywhere on the folding screen, held up very well.
I have a friend with the fold 3, and the main screen is basically destroyed, much like your partner.
it has to do with the way they are folded. the fold 5 uses a "tear drop" fold similar to the Motorola phones.
The protective plastic seems to still be on this one. I used my z flip for 1 year before realizing that the crease was actually the plastic and not the screen itself.
yup! there's no need for me to pull this off yet, has held up surprisingly well. I had to take my screen protector off like 2 months into me owning the fold 2 lol
You can get the film replaced, for free the first time, then like $20 after. Mine basically came all the way off on the fold for my z flip, but then I went to a galaxy store and they replaced it and it's fine now.
My wife as one and no it does not. Does leave a crease just where it folds. Also it's already began to glitch. Just saying we won't be buying another one.
Loads of premium dumb phones had self healing displays back in the days. It's just a property of some plastics. But once we moved to glass screens, this feature got lost. The problem with plastic screens is that they're sticky compared to glass screens and that's not a good feeling when using a capacitive touch screen.
I remember trying Windows XP tablets at CeBIT 2004. Apple released their first Tablet in 2010. There‘s releasing something that does a job and there‘s releasing something that does the job. What I‘ve seen from Android foldables was underwhelming, Apple could do something differently, which still fits into the category but has improved aspects not only Apple considers necessary to release such a device.
Eh? Apple is pretty decent about privacy, at least leaps and bounds better than anything mainstream in the Android market, and I haven’t seen an ad on my iPhone. What ads are you using talking about?
My spouse and I are currently watching Star Trek: TNG, so I thought of Data saying, "Sir, there appears to be an unauthorized tracking device following our movements."
If the operating system doesn't matter (like in this article and in most conversations), I just say: smartphones (or phones). If the operating system matters, I mention the operating system (android or iOS) once and then just call it phone/smartphone. Or Android phone. Never called multiple android phones "Androids" though.
I dont call two Microsoft pc's "two Microsofts" either.
But today I learned that it is apparantly normal to call it Androids. I really never encountered the term before.
privatbank has a similar feature in Ukraine, noone uses it lol
don't get why anyone would ever want this, when you can just tap your phone w google pay
I'm guessing they mean using it as an anti-theft device. If a thief steals an item with a tracker in it, they'll be notified of the tracker's presence by their phone and remove it. Of course, these trackers aren't anti-theft devices and you probably shouldn't use them to try confronting a thief on your own anyway...
The part where tags are for finding lost, not stolen, items.
Stalking someone and tracking a stolen item without alerting the thief are identical situations, so you simply can't make a device that works for one and not the other.
One workaround that I can think of is if something like this was properly integrated to police systems, so that when you report the tagged item as stolen, the cops could switch it to a mode that keeps silent.
The trade of there is the police potentially have your location at any given time with the flip of a switch. I'd lose many of my positions before I have the police gang that much power.
Both Apple and Google’s location tracking networks are end to end encrypted. Moreover, Apple and Google have refused to put backdoors into their encryption protocols because it’s a massive opportunity for security exploits that could tank their businesses.
If the cops want to find you, they’re probably just going to ask your phone carrier to triangulate you with their tower network, which they’ve been doing for decades. That’s way faster and easier than jumping through hoops to somehow use the Find My or Find My Device networks.
For sure. That (theoretically) does require warrants, so there's some level of red tape. That would for sure have to exist in this made up situation where talking about. No way do I want anyone able to just flip a switch and snoop on me, especially the police.
This use case has been covered since these products launched.
Apple Find My to Apple Find My network got notifications. Android Find My Device to Android Find My Device got notifications. And if Android users installed Apple’s Tracker Detect, they got notifications.
Now cross platform tracking will happen without the user having to download and install an app.
If you were stealing bikes, and didn’t have something like Tracker Detect installed on your Android phone, you’re not the smartest crook.
I mean on Android you can just use Aurora or NeoStore which make it extremely easy to identify all sorts of trackers, but then you realize most of Google's stuff falls into that...
This is about trackers as in devices which can geolocate, such as Apple's airtags, not privacy-invading data collection in apps. Google obviously wouldn't care to address the latter.
It has to keep pinging so the iPhone knows it's still close. Other devices detect that ping; it can't choose who hears it when it calls out.
That's the whole thing: they are constantly calling out to any Apple device in the area so that device will report to Apple the tag's location through the Find My network. It has to call out, otherwise it can't function as a tracker.
Which is where this new standard comes in. Alerting you to an unrecognized device nearby that is pinging out while you're moving, because previously there was no shared standard that permitted this across all devices.
But there's really no good solution to this that isn't going to be messy and trigger a lot of false positives. It's a band-aid on a problematic technology that has been normalized, and now they're trying to back-port privacy into it to save face. All of this discussion should have happened before they started selling anything.
It's bad enough to sell cheap consumer tracking devices and provide access to a whole mesh network of other people's phones to use them on, without any consideration for what they would be used for. It's especially egregious that they made that technology proprietary so Android devices could not easily identify a tracker near them.
That is how it works. Unwanted tracking notifications only trigger if separated from the owner for some time. It’s possible the paired iPhone was drained or had Bluetooth disabled which would cause the tracker to think it’s separated.
I bought airtags for my luggage and keys, but they're registered to my iPad which is not my EDC device and is large. My main device is an Android. If I don't take the iPad with me, eventually my Android will pop up with an "unknown tracker following you" message. The message iets you ring it to locate it, but nothing else. The annoyingest thing is that i cannot tell the android phone it is mine and known, and please stop pinging me about it.
No, they were trying to ban them (from checked luggage) because they are powered by a “Lithium” battery and airlines confused them with Lithium-Ion batteries. The latter ones are indeed forbidden in checked luggage.
No, that’s stupid. They don’t get anything from keeping that from you. And the main source of frustration comes from luggage handlers that are usually employed by the airports and not the airlines.
When they don’t give a damn, you won’t get your luggage. Like in this video where they insisted the luggage is still at a different airport. Because that’s what the computer said. And nobody looked for themselves which would’ve easily shown that somebody clearly forgot to do the arrival scan.
The solution would probably just be to dismiss the alert with a response like "I am on a plane, bus boat, etc. I'm traveling with strangers and their stuff". Then it would temporarily remember all the local devices, and then dump that list after a set period of time.
The service already excludes any geographical tracker that is within range of its owner (as determined by whether the owner's primary device is moving with the tracker).
They could probably use a few other rules, too, like excluding trackers that are moving with more than 10 other people simultaneously, so that some keys left behind on a bus, train, or plane don't trigger the alert for a bunch of strangers.
I... partially agree? There's a bit of a difference between the targeted tracking a private individual does with an airtag, vs the generalized, but equally creepy tracking google/apple/others do through widespread tech. One definitely poses a greater short term risk than the other
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